Visibility Of Different Room Rates within Care Home

[Hours Away]

I’m worried that I didn’t ask enough questions before signing a new care/nursing home contract when my PWD moved from one of the smallest rooms to a vacant much larger room, after it had been redecorated.

It seemed slightly odd at the time that the Manager needed to “work out” the room rate for the new room, rather than just charging the rate they were previously charging for the room. However, perhaps it is common to charge a bit more for a recently redecorated room so they can recoup the redecoration costs.

The care/nursing home is small with ~20 beds and run as a charity. I think the rooms vary quite a lot in size so are charged at different rates. They charge the same room rates regardless of whether residents need nursing care so I was told that the cost would not increase if this became necessary but they would then claim “free nursing care” to offset against the additional costs they would then incur.

Yesterday I came across some info on the local council’s website which suggests we might now be paying even more than what they are quoting for 2022/23 as the most expensive care/nursing home room in the area, so I now feel I must ask some more questions, even if it’s just to confirm that the difference is simply due to the annual room rate increase.

As PoA would it be reasonable to ask the Care Home Manager for a list of the current room rates (in particular those of similarly sized rooms) and perhaps also what they were previously charging for the room (no idea why I didn’t ask this previously)? If it turns out we might be paying a bit more than we perhaps should be then I’m hoping there may be an opportunity to renegotiate either with the Manager or directly with the Trustees before the annual increase next year.

 

[Banjomansmate]

LA rated rooms are probably the smaller, more cramped rooms. When we were shown the room on offer for The Banjoman it was a room at the front of the building but when we went back to check and see what we could put in there for him we were going to be given a small, pokier room at the back, supposedly with a “sea view”, which you could only access standing up as it was small and high, probably against the gales blasting in from the Channel!
I refused it point blank and insisted on the larger and better laid out room we were originally shown where we could fit in his own riser recliner chair and you could actually look out of the window.
I always thought the carer who took us round on the first weekend visit accidentally showed us the wrong room and it probably cost more than the second one that I refused.

 

[Hours Away]

The other care home I was originally looking at is part of a nationwide chain and seems to have a £10k per annum difference in cost between their "standard" and "premium" rooms. I've agreed to pay almost £20k per annum more for a larger room and it seems such an enormous sum it's been playing on my mind ever since. My mistake was probably to show the PWD the much more spacious room before clarifying exactly how much more it was going to cost and what the other room rates in the home were. The care home is well run and a lovely place but I can't seem to stop dwelling on the enormous sums involved, whether I should have tried to negotiate a better rate and also trying to work out how long it will be before we run out of money.