Your feedback helps us to improve our website.

Translate

Residential and Nursing Care Market Position Statement 2025 - 2040 Nursing Care - Overall Current Market Status

The current nursing care home market in Walsall is rated as semi-sufficient in terms of supply but nursing needs are projected to grow and complexity increase. There is good quality provision in the Borough as exemplified by some providers, but there needs to be sustained approaches to driving up the quality of all nursing care provision in the Borough.

 The stability of the Walsall nursing care home workforce also needs maintenance and growth. Sufficiency of supply is dependent on a sufficient, trained and skilled nursing and care workforce in nursing homes.

 Existing and new providers in nursing care need to be aware that there is room for growth in nursing care into the future. You may wish to consider investigating specific areas of hard of source locations or specialist types of care, such as complex nursing care, dementia nursing care and nursing care for those with alcohol and substance misuse nursing needs.

Provider dimension

The current Residential and Nursing Care Services open contract commenced on 1st November 2020 until 31/3/2025. This has been extended by two years, therefore the open contract expires on 31/3/2027. A new contract will be place for 1st April 2027. 

This open contract is therefore in its final stages. The Council, ICB and providers will work together to co-design new models of nursing care and Forums and co-design sessions are in train already to facilitate this. The current open contract contains 8 provisions for older people’s bed-based care and 8 provisions for younger adult bed-based care.

 Some commissioned providers are using digital technology to manage care provision. However, the extent to which this is used varies - some providers are using technology to manage all aspects of their business. We want more providers to be using digital methods to operate their businesses and there is support for this now from a dedicated commissioning lead for digital. Contact adultsocialcarecommissioning@walsall.gov.uk

Market risks

There are several risks associated with the commissioning of the nursing market in Walsall currently:

  • Health is likely to experience higher demand into the future for nursing placements from hospital, particularly if people are on a Continuing Healthcare (CHC) pathway. Re-assessment from CHC into Non CHC pathways poses the Council further financial costs
  • Potential risk to the Council of the CHC Team advising when a checklist is submitted that the person is not optimised and requires an alternative placement to meet his/her needs which is always at a higher cost. The Council moves the person to a new placement, following which the NHS sometimes states that they are not CHC eligible
  • Rates paid to Walsall nursing home providers are lower than most WM LA comparator authorities
  • The overall quality of nursing care needs improvement – there need to be more CQC Good or better rated nursing homes in Walsall
  • Local quality assurance and improvement support for Walsall nursing homes needs to be maintained and further invested in
  • Social care workforce risks (nursing, complexity of need)
  • Risk that some provision might need to be de-commissioned from Walsall Council funded clients due to quality concerns or non-agreement on fee rates
  • There needs to be a better understanding in terms of self-funding client numbers and needs in Walsall and ensuring sufficiency and choice of supply for self-funding clients.

Distance from vision

The vision in this MPS for nursing care of the future needs to be further co-designed with the ICB and with providers. This co-design will continue through the re-commissioning process to 2027.

 There are positive aspects of the current market, particularly the strong ICB focus on nursing care. However, over the next 24 months, the Council, partners like the ICB and providers need to go on a significant journey with providers to co-produce models of nursing care embedded in time for the new contract that will go live in 2027

Market opportunities

  • Opportunity to co-design with providers and partners nursing care models of the future in Walsall
  • Opportunity for the Council and system partners like the ICB to work with providers to invest more in driving up the quality of nursing care building on the Quality in Care Team and new approaches to quality improvement
  • Opportunities to diversify bed-based provision in areas of the Borough with high current and predicted demand especially for complex nursing care, but lower supply
  • Opportunities to fill gaps in types of nursing provision such as nursing respite beds, bariatric care, dementia care, complex nursing care, drug and alcohol misuse care and nursing care for behaviours that challenge.
  • A nursing workforce, training and retention scheme is critical to increase capacity in Walsall
  • Review of complex needs or pathways together with the ICB to ensure the service is appropriate, is funded correctly and has the best outcome for the adult and their family.