What does an average stay look like?

Within industry circles we often hear stats quoted about the average stay for a resident at a care home, with perhaps the most common stats being the average length of stay and revenue per stay. But we've been wondering where these figures come from and how closely they align with individual care providers and their homes?

Anecdotally the figures we hear quoted are typically around 2 years for the average length of stay (non-respite) and £50,000 for the average revenue generated from a stay. So first off, where do these figures come from?

The PSSRU / Bupa paper

Of course in reality there are many sources for these figures, some of which are more rigorous in their methods than others, but the one we hear and see quoted most often is a Bupa commissioned paper published in 2011 under the title: Length of stay in care homes

The paper looked at residents in 305 Bupa care homes throughout the UK who died in the period between November 2008 and May 2010. The number of residents in the sample set totalled 11,565.

The paper provides a large number of well-researched stats but for the purpose of this article we're interested in the adjusted mean figures which for the sample set are estimated as:

• 2.5 years (801 days) average length of stay
• £71,400 average cost of stay

As you can see these figures are higher than the ones we typically hear quoted, so why do we think this might be the source most people work from? We think there are a couple of possible reasons for the difference in figures:

• There is a previous paper from PSSRU from August 2000 which reported an average length of stay / mortality of 20 months and lifetime costs of £32,000. One possibility is that over time figures from both papers have been quoted and people simply take the mean of the two, assuming this to be a safer estimate.
• The sample set in the paper commissioned by Bupa looks at residents who stayed until they died at the care home and does not look at residents who stayed and then moved to another home, so another possibility is people adjust the figures down with this in mind.

The truth is that we're only guessing at the source of these figures. You may well have heard a different story, there may be other sources we're not aware of that these figures are derived from, and of course almost certainly Chinese whispers plays a role in how the figures are passed on.

Why do these figures matter?

We often see the average revenue figure used in ROI (return on investment) calculations, for example if the average revenue generated from a (non-respite) stay is £50,000 and we want to allocate no more than 2.5% of our revenue on marketing spend then the cost of acquisition should be targeted at £1,250 or less. Likewise length of stay may be used to estimate the average net profit for a resident based on the average cost per day to provide care, the average length of stay, and the average gross revenue.

For this reason an out-of-date market average, or worse an anecdotal one, isn't a good figure to use, for example as part of your calculations for next year's marketing budget, because it won't accurately reflect your own data.

What does the average stay look like at your care homes?

To answer this question we introduced a new Average stay report that provides figures for the average length of, and revenue from, a resident stay across your portfolio.

To access the average stay report;

• Select Reports in the main navigation
• Select the Service users (or Residents) tab
• Select the Average stay report

By default the report shows figures for long-term/permanent care, but it can be filtered to calculate figures for respite and/or a specific care type (residential or nursing).

We include the sample size for the report against each home as well as the total. If your sample size is small (less than 100), you can increase the number of years the report samples data from.