Social care across the UK set to improve dramatically with the launch of the nation’s first ever live scoring system for care homes

LONDON – May 07, 2024 Autumna, the UK’s largest and most comprehensive elder care directory, has today announced the launch of the country’s first real-time scoring system that will radically transform the way both care seekers assess care and how care providers market their services. 

Called OpenScore, the game changing digitally led initiative provides a live score out of 10, with care providers being able to quickly communicate performance using multiple data points that are aggregated in real time.

This is the first time the UK has introduced a live scoring system for social care, with previous assessments relying mainly upon the Care Quality Commission’s ratings of ‘inadequate’ (lowest rating) to ‘outstanding’ (highest rating), which can be years out of date.

Autumna has teamed up with some of the UK’s leading care associations, financial institutions, academia and care providers and government regulators to launch OpenScore. These include Care England, LaingBuisson, Care UK, Legal & General, Let’s Go Create, University of Kent, Virgin Money, Stephens Scown Solicitors, , Person Centred Software and CASPA.

Debbie Harris, founder and Managing Director at Autumna, said: “Not only is this intended to improve standards by giving more control to the care provider to improve their services proactively, but the tool will also address one of the biggest challenges facing the social care sector: trust and transparency for the public.”

The tool bases its assessment on multiple GDPR-compliant data points that are updated every 24 hours. These include:

• Live regulatory ratings and audits; CQC, CIW, CIS, RQIA
• Live daily visitors’ reviews of the listed homes, rated 0-5
• Live registered managers: whether a manager is in place, bio and updates
• Live data freshness
• Infection prevention control measures
• Live ESG updates: such as eco-friendly products, recycling systems, energy consumption measure, solar and wind power, carbon neutral status
• Live food hygiene ratings, from 0-5
• Dining, food offering:  type of food offered, flexibility of dining etc.
• Transparency of cost

Care England CEO, Professor Martin Green, said:

“OpenScore stands as a pivotal development for care providers, commissioners, and the public alike, promising to elevate care standards across the board. Particularly in light of the challenges faced with the CQC, the system aligns with our ongoing efforts to advocate for a balanced approach to inspections, ensuring that improvements are recognised and prioritised alongside the identification of risks. We see OpenScore as a game-changer that will foster a better, more transparent care system for everyone.”

With more than 90% of the decision-making process when choosing a care home taking place online, OpenScore provides a trusted ‘at a glance’ live assessment of any care service to help self-funded care seekers make their choices.

“When a care seeker needs to find appropriate care quickly, OpenScore provides an instant, accurate, live and relevant overview of the quality of care on offer,” added Debbie.

Virgin Money’s Head of Health & Social Care Sector, Derek Breingan, said:

“As a major funder of the care sector Virgin Money is supporting the OpenScore project to further the importance of quality in care and the benefits of using technology for data capture.”

The system has been specifically designed to give more control to the care provider, allowing them to improve their service based on live data and customer feedback. A higher score will indicate better quality care and a more conducive workplace for delivering excellent care. This should help providers to attract and retain both residents and staff, which will in turn will help improve standards for social care across the UK. OpenScore will provide the NHS and commissioning bodies with a live indicator of the quality of care in a single setting.

With 70-80% of care homes currently ranked as ‘Good’ by the CQC, many care homes lack the ability to publicly promote their unique selling points to the public. OpenScore allows care homes to differentiate between each other and the ‘inadequate’ and ‘requires improvement’ care homes will not have to wait for a CQC inspection, which can take years, to showcase improvement.

Officially launched this morning for premium listed care homes, OpenScore will eventually be rolled out across all care homes and home care providers.