Are uber-style platforms the future of non-medicalised homecare?
Healthcare Europa chats to Adam Pike, co-founder and CEO of UK-based platform SuperCarers, which brings the sharing economy to non-medicalised homecare. Is he doing to homecare what Uber did for personal transportation?
Adam Pike founded the platform with his brother in 2015 after their mother’s negative experience of residential care homes. “Being away from the family home, the clinical environment and the constant changing of staff made the whole experience deeply impersonal . The majority of people would prefer to stay in their own home and to choose their carer.”
He and his brother have built a platform that puts those with care needs in touch with carers directly, cutting out the traditional role of an agency. SuperCarers’ platform matches users to suitable carers, taking a commission of hours billed through the platform.
“The agency model has many issues with it (cost and supply being the most obvious). As a consequence, we are helping families find vetted and approved carers directly. In doing so they save money, and carers are remunerated far better. In many ways we are formalising what is already an informal relationship.
“We have a database of carers based on location, qualifications and experience. Users fill in a form and that job gets sent to the appropriate carers, who will then bid for the role. Some users will need more than one carer and can therefore build a care team through our platform.”
Right now SuperCarers facilitates around 17,500 care hours a month, almost three times the same period last year, Pike says. Live-in care makes up one-third and hourly care two-thirds of the group’s overall care hours.
But the hourly service is limited to London for now. It costs a minimum of £14 per care hour to users, with a median of around £16, which is 30-50% cheaper than what agencies typically charge for private care according to figures from the BBC that Pike cites. Its fees are about equal to competitor HomeTouch’s average cost of private care; a site that lets users choose from its entire database of carers.
On carer pay, Pike says: “We ask, what does the carer need to earn for their pay to be transformative? We take that and add our 20% commission. In London, the minimum they will earn is £11.20 per care hour [giving the £14/hour cost to users].”
This is much higher than what carers typically earn through traditional agencies, and so the temptation for them to make the switch is there.
SuperCarers is an introductory and brokerage service and so is outside of the scope of regulation. It is not subject to scrutiny by the government’s healthcare watchdog, the Care Quality Commission (CQC). It has, however, established a Care Advisory Board comprised of, amongst others, the former strategy lead of the CQC and the former Minister of State for Care Services.
“If the relationship is not working out, families can ask us to introduce a new carer. Before SuperCarers, many people would try to find a carer directly, but 60% of those that did failed to carry out proper background checks.”
Pike says much of what it is doing is formalising an existing informal sector, rather than competing with traditional care agencies.
On vetting, he says: “We do right-to-work checks, enhanced criminal record checks and background checks. The second step is validating experience and qualifications. We also meet carers face-to-face.”
What about future opportunities with NHS apps? Fellow digital health platforms Evergreen, Now Healthcare Group and babylon have recently launched NHS-integrated apps, but Pike rules this out, while leaving the door open for collaboration.
“There are opportunities around social prescribing, which is where GPs prescribe social support at home instead of clinical intervention. NHS trusts also want people to stay at home longer and prevent bed-blocking. There is a big opportunity here but we don’t fit into the traditional architecture.”
Part of this might be that Pike sees potential in other markets too: “International expansion is absolutely the plan. We expect to be in other markets within the next two years. Right now we are especially looking at France, Germany, Australia, Ireland and China.”
To fund this expansion Supercarers is in talks to conduct another fundraising round, which prevents Pike being more open about current finances. He has in the past projected £1m in revenue for 2017 and £2.5m for next year, hoping to break even then too. The 17,000 monthly hours cited earlier indicates a revenue run-rate of£ 600-700k.
It raised £1m from Seedrs last year and a further £1.2m earlier this year, with backers including the JamJar investment fund, a venture capital fund founded by the makers of Innocent Drinks which has also invested in babylon.
We would welcome your thoughts on this story. Email your views to Cameron Murray or call 0207 183 3779.
