Following a model of acquiring and improving failing care homes that need assistance, RB Care Homes have stamped their mark on the care sector as industry pioneers.
Chief operations officer, Raqia Bibi, has long believed in the practice of protecting and improving existing care homes, rather than building new settings from scratch. Under her leadership RB Care Homes has become adept at changing the direction of ailing care settings and building on what is already established.
Elaborating on the RB Care Homes philosophy, Bibi said: “Established care homes are something to be nurtured and protected. There are many ramifications to demolishing them in favour of newly built care homes and I feel strongly about the care of these intuitions and their residents.”
A major driver of the RB Care Homes strategy is based on the fact that longstanding care homes often hold the unspoken status of community institutions. They can come based in older, protected buildings, and for many years in some cases have provided care for older generations and are places where close-knit communities have been formed. Furthermore, local authorities are often closely affiliated with care settings in their area.
When these older and more established homes are then improved, the occupancy rates within these homes tend to be high and in-demand. This provides an effective springboard for self-sufficiency and profit through higher costs per bed and a higher fee income.
On the other hand, with newly built care homes there is no established community already in place. The facilities may be more state-of-the-art and up to date but having required major investment to build in the first place, new staff then need to be hired and trained and then a community within must be built from scratch to provide the necessary income for its upkeep.
It can also be a challenge convincing families and prospective service users to trust new homes. Lasting relationships must be built and a reputation needs to be established quickly to enable success. To achieve this, newly built homes tend to offer a lower cost per bed, equating to a lower fee income from the beginning. This helps make the challenge of establishing and sustaining new care settings even greater.
Building a community from nothing is difficult. It is also not as simple an exercise as moving some settled residents from an established care home into a new one to fill the high number of vacant beds. There are risks that come with this, given that it can disrupt the routine and comfort of a vulnerable individual and move them away from a community they feel safe in. The knock-on effects of such upheaval can lead to lower life expectancy and a host of other physical and mental health problems.
It is for these reasons that RB Care Homes have opted to champion the maintenance and improvement of established care homes in the UK to maintain that sense of community and pave the way toward greater profitability from the outset, all while making conditions better for the people that matter: the service users.
As Bibi puts it: “Revitalising an ailing home is far more rewarding than building a brand new one. Knowing we are improving the lives of the elderly and a community as a whole by renovating and breathing life back into respected homes is what we strive towards. It makes me proud to be a part of the healthcare sector.”
Photo by Claudia Love on Unsplash
