How CareCubed helps meet care challenges

CareCubed is the marketleading digital care pricing tool which offers a secure online platform to support the open and transparent negotiation of care placements. It is now being used by more than half of all local authorities in England, both as a day-to-day negotiation tool and strategic planning solution.

CareCubed is a nationally recognised, independent tool which produces an initial benchmark costing based on robust and regularly updated data. The guide price generated by the tool acts as a starting point for negotiations between a provider and commissioner. The tool is available as an annual subscription for care commissioners and providers. There are currently modules offered covering: Working Age Adults, Older Persons, Children & Young People and Health. Here we share how CareCubed can be used to negotiate uplift requests and help with benchmarking care costs. We also introduce the new CareCubed Advisory Group.

Benchmarking: achieve a fair and sustainable price

CareCubed is designed to help commissioners and providers negotiate and arrive at a mutually agreed fair cost of care. Powered by a wide range of regularly updated figures from official sources such as Land Registry, HMRC, Care England and the Department for Health, CareCubed can accurately benchmark the cost of care for a particular service in any given locality. Licences are available for the children’s and young persons and adult market.

CareCubed is now being used by more than 50 per cent of councils. Some providers have their own CareCubed licence, others might access the tool through a local authority’s place-based licence, and some might provide costings for commissioners to input into the system. The details provided generate a guide price for a placement which considers costs given by the provider and local and national datasets in CareCubed. Rather than dictating what the placement should cost, the benchmarked guide price generated by the tool is intended to be a starting point for negotiations between provider and commissioner.

“It is open to a provider to argue why their pricing might be higher than the benchmark and it is open to the commissioner to accept or reject that offer based on that information. It is not a price fixing tool, it is a tool designed to help establish what would represent value for money in their circumstances to allow the negotiation to be on an equal footing,” explains Jim Weir, Senior Consultant at iESE.

One challenge commissioners face is that different providers might categorise costs differently, while others might apply a standard inflationary uplift without detailing their specific underlying costs. iESE is currently looking to work with the care industry to standardise how it attributes costs, but in the meantime, Weir advises commissioners to ask for a further breakdown where costs seem unusually high. “You can’t just look at the headline figure, you do have to drill in a bit and find out what is included in the costings given – whether it is right for the individual, and a fair price for both commissioner and provider. Where a local authority is using CareCubed, we would encourage providers to convert their standard spreadsheet and separate their costs into the headings given in CareCubed because it is going to allow the commissioner to get a clearer understanding and turn things around much more quickly. The danger, if they don’t, is that they will be perceived as being out of line with the market without realising why. For example, what they are giving as head office costs might be showing as frontline costs in other services,” he explained. For example, some providers might regard head office costs to include support functions like HR, learning and development and IT, while others might add clinical support and regional management.

Rather than being a tool geared towards either party, Weir is keen to stress that through benchmarking, CareCubed aims to reach a fair cost of care where providers are properly reimbursed for services they provide and public money is spent in the most effective way. This includes identifying cases where placements are underfunded, allowing the opportunity for the local authority to level up: “It is not in anyone’s interest to drive providers to the wall. One of the key things to making the market work is making sure we have sustainable, well-funded services,” he added.

In one case a provider was able to demonstrate that the generated benchmark price was too low because they had taken on NHS cases and were required to continue to provide NHS terms and conditions: “If you were to benchmark that provider against other providers, their staffing costs – particularly things like pensions and holiday – would be higher than the benchmark,” Weir explained.

CareCubed allows a local authority to see what the gap is between a generated benchmark guide price and what the provider is asking for and why that gap exists. In the example above, the commissioner would be able to see how the additional cost would start to taper down over time due to staff attrition. “Using CareCubed brings transparency to the process,” Weir added.

• To find out more about CareCubed and benchmarking contact: jim.weir@iese.org.uk or visit www.iese.org.uk/carecubed.