| Reference | FOI 2025/1350 |
|---|---|
| Description | Complex Care providers and costs |
| Date Requested | 28/08/2025 |
| Date Replied | 17/09/2025 |
| Category | Continuing Health Care (CHC) |
Under the Freedom of Information act, please would you be able to confirm the following,
1. What are your lowest and highest agreed charge rates for Complex Care providers to provide Home Care services in 2025? (per hour)
2. What are your lowest and highest agreed charge rates for Home Care providers to provide Domiciliary Care services in 2025? (per hour)
3. Can you provide all current contact email addresses for both your Brokerage and Commissioning Managers for, Adult complex care services, Paediatric complex care services, Supported living services and Learning disability and Mental Health teams?
4. Can you provide all current contact phone numbers for both your Brokerage and Commissioning Managers for, Adult complex care services, Paediatric complex care services, Supported living services and Learning disability and Mental Health teams?
5. Do you work with providers on a spot purchase agreement?
6. Who are your top 5 providers for Complex Care Services? (please break down into three categories, those that you use the most, those that provide the best quality and those that are the best value for money)
7. Who are your top 5 providers for Domiciliary Care Services? (please break down into three categories, those that you use the most, those that provide the best quality and those that are the best value for money)
8. In 2024, how many referrals did you send to Complex care Providers?
NHS Greater Manchester consists of the following 10 Greater Manchester Localities: Bolton, Bury, Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale, Manchester, Oldham, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, and Wigan (former Clinical Commissioning Groups), who currently all have their own processes/systems for recording their Continuing Healthcare (CHC) activity. As such, information is recorded by each locality to suit the systems and processes adopted in that locality, and not all information is available consistently across all localities.
Most notably, the Salford locality arranges its purchases of homecare under contract with the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust (NCA FT), and therefore NHS GM does not hold much of the requested information – the detail of this is instead held by the NCA FT and may be requested from them directly under the Freedom of Information Act.
In respect of cases in the Wigan locality, in the majority of cases, care is procured through the Local Authority under joint working arrangements, covering various types of individualised care, including those relevant to your request. In these instances, the Council commissions the care and recharges NHS GM for the costs incurred. Limited data is provided by the Council, and therefore NHS GM does not hold sufficient data in respect of cases which are procured in this manner through the Council. Where NHS GM directly procures care for the Wigan locality, this information is included in the below. For information not held by NHS GM, this may be requested from Wigan Council under the Freedom of Information Act.
One example of where not all data requested is held is in respect of the hourly rates commissioned. Whilst the hourly rate is used to calculate a weekly package of care, the value of that package of care is recorded on the ICB’s systems, rather than the hours and hourly rate used in its calculation. The hourly rate, and number of hours commissioned to calculate the weekly cost is not held in a structured manner that would allow it to be extracted and reported in respect of a number of localities. To do so instead would involve examining and manually extracting information from each individual record, at which point the costs of complying with this Freedom of Information request would extend beyond the limits imposed by the Act.
1 & 2. As described above, information is not held in a consistent structured format to allow NHS GM to extract a complete data set of the hours commissioned and the hourly rates charged as part of homecare packages of care.
3 & 4. Contact information for the locality Continuing Healthcare Teams is available on the NHS GM website via the following link – CHC – NHS Continuing Healthcare | Greater Manchester Integrated Care Partnership
5. Yes
| Locality | |
| Bolton | Yes |
| Bury | Yes |
| HMR | Yes |
| Manchester | Yes, but only in extenuating circumstances for continuity of care purposes. |
| Oldham | Yes |
| Salford | Yes |
| Stockport | Yes |
| Tameside | Yes |
| Trafford | Yes |
| Wigan | NHS GM Wigan do commission on a spot purchase arrangement in exceptional circumstances and on an individual basis. |
6.
| Locality | |
| Bolton, Bury, HMR, Manchester, Oldham, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, Wigan | The locality does not hold the information broken down into the categories requested. Complex Care / Domiciliary Care is also not differentiated due to our service providing Continuing Care / Complex Care. The Answer for both question 6 and 7 is the same. |
| Salford | Salford District Nursing Service is commissioned via the Northern Care Alliance as the lead provider for personal care for individuals eligible for NHS CHC in Salford and the commissioning of care provision outside of this service is commissioned through other organisations as part of the integrated commissioning arrangements in Salford. |
7. The response to question 7 is the same as for question 6 for all localities with the exception of Wigan.
| Locality | |
| Wigan | NHS GM Wigan utilise the Ethical Framework to commission routine domiciliary care which is modelled on care providers allocated a geographical footprint, we do not hold the information in the categories requested. |
8. The requested information is not held by 9 of the 10 localities. Where information is held (by the Salford locality) the number of patients in the response is less than 5. As the number of patients is considered small, it is acknowledged that there is a risk of the identification of individual patients. As such, NHS GM is only able to confirm that the number of patients referred in the year was less than 5.
