Care providers: where the repeated admin actually sits

What the repeated work actually looks like #

It comes down to four recurring shapes.

• The rota goes out, and then it changes

  Somebody calls in sick at six in the morning, a coordinator starts ringing round for cover, then tells the client, then tells the family, then edits the run, then makes sure that edit reaches the timesheet and the invoice.

• A visit happens and a note gets written

  Weeks later somebody has to find that note again to answer a complaint or to show an inspector.

• A carer is recruited

  The same sequence of checks and chases runs for every single one.

• The month comes round

  The same audits, and the same invoices to the same councils and the same private clients, built from visit data that already exists in two places.

None of that is unusual, and none of it is a sign that a service is badly run. It is the shape of the work. What matters commercially is that the same handful of jobs accounts for most of the office hours, and that they are the jobs that get done at nine at night.

There is one published figure worth knowing. Florence, a care staffing supplier, surveyed 222 NHS and social care managers and published the results on 4 October 2023.

Those were the tasks taking the most time, in that order. One in five managers said they spend between seven and eight hours a day on admin alone, and 45 per cent said that admin time affects people's care.

It is a supplier's survey with a self selecting sample, which is exactly how we describe it on the cover page, and it is still the clearest published account of where a care manager's day goes.

How to tell which parts run on rules #

Take one of those jobs and ask what decides the next step. If the answer is a rule you could write on an index card, and the information it needs is already recorded somewhere, it is a candidate.

The same test runs through every sector page on this site, and there is a longer version of it in AI automation, explained.

Where care is different from everything else here #

Care records, visit notes, medication records and anything else that says something about a person's health are special category data under UK GDPR. Your service stays the controller for that data whoever you buy software from, which means you need a lawful basis and an Article 9 condition for what you do with it, and a data protection impact assessment before you begin processing that is likely to result in a high risk.

The ICO is the place to check that, and the links at the foot of this page go straight to its guidance rather than to our reading of it. CQC's own Regulation 17 puts it in plainer words: providers must securely maintain accurate, complete and detailed records for each person using the service.

Start with what CQC actually looks at if compliance is what is eating your week, or with the free tools if you want to put a number on the admin before you talk to anybody.