How much does bedroom downtime cost my care home?

We want to dig into how much it costs your care home every single week that there is not a resident living in that room.

It’s something that, before we speak to the care home about it, is often not thought about but actually has a much bigger impact than you may have thought. 

According to carehome.co.uk the average weekly cost for a residential care home in the UK is £704 and the average cost for nursing care is £888.

Based on the national average for bedroom costs, waiting for furniture for 4 – 6 weeks means you could lose over £5,000 just while waiting for your furniture to be delivered. Suddenly that £150 you saved when buying your furniture at the expense of shorter lead times seems rather insignificant.

We highly recommend that you do this calculation for yourself based on the costs of your room to see how much you could be losing in revenue while waiting for your furniture to be delivered.

(Average room cost per week) x (Delivery time on your new furniture in weeks) = Total revenue lost due to room downtime while waiting for your new furniture

How can I reduce my room downtime?

There are a few different ways that you can reduce your bedroom downtime and each one has its advantages and its disadvantages. We have listed these below and explained the potential problems with each to help you form your decision.

Related Post: How can I reduce my care home bedroom downtime?

Sourcing furniture that has shorter delivery times

Across the UK there are several suppliers and manufacturers that offer furniture with a much quicker lead time, ranging from around 5 – 10 working days depending on which company you use.

The advantages of using this are obviously that you get your furniture a lot quicker, therefore, reducing room downtime, but some of the potential problems are that as either the furniture is stocked at the suppliers or components are stocked in the case of manufactures; this can lead to a limited range of products to choose from that may not fit with your care homes design scheme for example. However, a lot of these suppliers have a good selection of products to choose from.

Bringing furniture into stock on-site in your care home

This is a good option if you are happy tying cash up in furniture stock. The advantage of using this option is that your rooms can be refurbished within hours as the furniture will be on-site already and you will be able to bulk buy the furniture to start with, potentially giving you better pricing and a broader range of furniture on offer.

Setting up a supply contract with your supplier

This is something that we have started to see come into the market more and more over the past few years. Many suppliers will now set up custom schemes for your home to give them a unique look and then will stock either the fabrics and components if they are a manufacture or stock the furniture if they are a supplier, enabling you to get the furniture in a much shorter delivery time.

One of the problems with setting this up is that they can take a while to set the schemes up and then implement, this is just simply due to design time and getting the schemes approved and then getting either the fabrics into stock or waiting for the furniture to come into stock with your supplier.

I trust this article has been helpful in helping you to understand how much bedroom downtime can be costing your care home but if you still have some questions, we are more than happy to help you, either view our furniture below or contact us and we will be more than happy to go through your questions with you.

Who is Edison & Day?

We are a UK manufacturer of care home furniture and have been supplying the market with high-quality furniture for 15 years, we create furniture and experiences that have the personal touch.

We have the largest care home furniture selection in the UK that is available to order online. With our industry-leading Dayex service, you can have your new furniture in as little as 5 working days.