FAMILY FURY OVER £200 BILLS FOR CARE HOME PPE
CARE home residents are being hit with extra bills of up to £200 a month to cover the staff’s personal protective equipment.
Hard-pressed families who are already paying £4,000 a month in care home fees accused bosses of greed after receiving a £6.47-a-day “PPE surcharge” for April.
Care provider Agincare also told them the charges will apply every month until the pandemic eases.
Agincare, which owns 20 care homes and employs 4,000 people, turned over £36.4million in 2018, making a profit of £2.36million.
Around 300 residents paying for private care with the Dorset-based company received the invoice out of the blue – on top of a five per cent increase in fees from last month.
Unfair
One relative received the bill despite the fact her elderly aunt had died nearly two months ago.
Jan Urquijo’s mother Pauline, 93, pays £939 a week to stay at Agincare’s Blenheim home in Bournemouth.
Her daughter said: “The care home industry is not losing money like other businesses.
“They are still getting their money every month, whether it’s from individuals, social services or the NHS.
“At a time when we’ve seen a lot of positivity and people pulling together I feel Agincare should take the hit of what in the grand scheme of things is not an enormous amount of money out of their profit share.
“The home where my mother is has not had any Covid cases or any staff sickness and I know they weren’t wearing PPE on the April 14, yet my mother is being charged £6.47 a day. I’m just horrified. Fee-paying residents are subsidising those paid by social services, yet they all get the same level of care. How unfair is that?
“I’m appalled at their attitude. It’s just greedy.”
Marlene Kennedy’s elderly aunt died at one of Agincare’s homes in March but she has still been asked to pay the April PPE surcharge.
She said: “It’s just unbelievable. I could understand if it had happened a day or two after but not six weeks. It’s
just not on for what’s supposed to a caring profession.”
Care homes have been badly hit by the Covid-19 crisis with residents discharged from hospital without being tested for the virus.
Many homes have struggled to obtain enough masks, gloves and gowns – and when they do they find prices hiked by manufacturers.
Firms have asked for extra Government cash but families say the majority of care homes are profitable businesses and should not be looking
for taxpayer support. Independent Care Group chairman Mike Padgham said: “It’s not appropriate for me to comment on what arrangements an individual organisation made for the delivery of its services.
“What I can say however is that the prices for PPE have gone up considerably in the last few weeks – in some cases by over 400 per cent for face masks and by more a third for gloves.
“Many providers therefore find themselves at risk of financial collapse without Government support. The
mounting costs are unsustainable, particularly when it seems PPE might be needed for many more months.
“In a recent survey we found that care providers fear for their own organisations’ future survival as they fight to help older and vulnerable people during the coronavirus pandemic.”
In a letter explaining the extra £200 monthly bill Agincare’s financial director Owen Griffiths said the firm had “no option but to invoice a temporary surcharge in order to contribute towards the additional costs being incurred by the home”.
He said the charges were for the additional use and price of PPE and increased staffing costs.
Agincare’s owner and chairman Derek Luckhurst said: “We are not asking residents to pay for PPE, we are asking them to contribute towards significantly increased care costs of which PPE represents less than 30 per cent.
“We have additional staffing costs to cope with the extra demands of the coronavirus outbreak, we also have statutory sick pay costs.
“We are experiencing about 10 per cent of staff off sick. That amounts to about 400 staff each receiving £98.85 a week – that’s £38,000 a week.
“We then have to staff the care home which means bringing in agency staff to cover, which typically costs more than our staff.
“This is a temporary measure and it will be reviewed on a monthly basis and any additional costs will be considered.”