How is the review score calculated?

A care home or group’s review score is the number you see in the blue circle on the search result pages as well as individual profiles (the actual score is calculated to 3 decimal places, and then rounded to 1 decimal place on the website).

Review scores influence the ranking position in which care homes are displayed in search results (there are several sort options available).  They also influence which care homes and groups win the annual Top 20 Carehome.co.uk Awards.

The maximum review score is 10. The score calculation takes all reviews published in the last 24 months into account and is made up of:

• The average rating from all reviews (maximum of 5 points)

    plus

• The number of published positive reviews vs a target (maximum of 5 points)

How the points for the average rating are calculated

5 points are available for the average rating from reviews published in the last 24 months.

There are 12 individual ratings on each review:

• Overall Experience

• Care/Support

• Treated with Dignity

• Staff

• Management

• Rooms

• Facilities

• Cleanliness

• Food & Drink

• Activities

• Safety/Security

• Value for Money

The reviewer can select from 5 options, each of which has a star/points value:

• Excellent = 5 stars/points

• Good = 4 stars/points

• Satisfactory = 3 stars/points

• Poor = 2 stars/points

• Very Poor = 1 star/point

The average rating is calculated by adding up the total number of points earned from all ratings and dividing this by the total number of completed ratings (blank or ‘don’t know’ ratings are not included).

How the points for the number of published positive reviews are calculated

5 points are available for meeting a target number of positive reviews published in the last 24 months. A positive review is defined as any review with an Overall Experience rating of Good (4) or Excellent (5) out of a maximum rating of 5.

The 5 points are split as follows:

a. 4 points are awarded for publishing 10 positive reviews in a rolling 24-month period.  This applies to all care homes, regardless of their size.  Points are awarded incrementally, as each new review publishes, until the target is met:

b. An additional 1 point is awarded for meeting the care home’s individual target, which is calculated as 20% of the registered number of available beds.  Eg if a home has 50 registered beds, its target will be 20% of this, ie 10 positive reviews.

If this target is partially reached then a portion of that 1 point is given eg if the home has 7 published positive reviews, it will receive 0.7 points.

For Adult Day Care Centres and Extra Care Housing, a) and b) are replaced by having 5 points available for 5 positive reviews in the last 24 months: 3 points for the first positive review and 0.5 points for each of the next 4 positive reviews.

These points are then added together to give an overall review score.

A full breakdown of a care home’s review score is published in the Review Score Breakdown section of its Profile Page:

Points to note:

When a review becomes older than 24 months, it will stop counting towards your score calculation and this can result in a change in the score (the impact will depend on the ratings in the review and whether you continue to meet your target).  We recommend regularly requesting reviews to mitigate the impact of ageing reviews on the score.

We will only publish one review per person at any time.  When a review is submitted by someone who has previously submitted a review, only the latest review will be published and count towards the review score.  Any previous reviews will be removed from publication and archived in your Control Panel.

The score takes time to grow.  A maximum score is only possible when the home has achieved full points for both parts of the score calculation.  Although a new listing might receive all 5-star ratings as it starts to publish reviews, it will not achieve a maximum review score until it has met its target number of published positive reviews in the score’s 24-month timeframe.

Once a care home meets its target number of reviews it will earn the maximum points available and any subsequent reviews from then on will only count towards the average rating part of the calculation.  This can sometimes lead to smaller increases in the review score.  Although we’re not able to award additional points for exceeding the target, it’s important to remember that, alongside the review score, we also display the number of reviews published over all time.  Care seekers have told us that this number is important to them to help them choose a care home – the higher the number, the more it is an indication of the robustness and trustworthiness of your reviews, and the less it looks like the reviewers have been cherry picked.  Also, the higher the number, the higher you will appear in the search results, if ranked by number of reviews.

Changes to the registered number of available beds shown on the care home’s profile page can impact the review score as this number determines the home’s target number of reviews.  Increasing the number of available beds will increase the home’s target.  Please note, the registered number of available beds displayed on the profile page must correspond to the number listed on your regulatory authority’s website.

Care homes which do not have a review in the last 24 months are not awarded a review score.

How group review scores are calculated

The group review score is derived from the average of all the review scores of its members with a review score.

75%+ members of the group must have a review score before a group review score can be achieved.

A group’s review score may be negatively impacted when new care homes are added to the group as they may take some time to publish a sufficient number of reviews to meet their target and maximise their score.

3 FEBRUARY 2022 - MINOR UPDATE - DEFINITION OF POSITIVE REVIEW

On 3 February 2022 we made a minor update to the review score relating to what we define as a positive review, and as a result a small percentage of review scores changed by a very small amount, generally less than 0.1 points.

5 Points of the review score are available for the number of positive reviews.

Before 3 February 2022, we defined a positive review as any Review with 'Extremely Likely' or 'Likely' in answer to the question 'How likely are you to recommend this care provider to friends and family if they needed similar care or treatment?'. 

On 3 February 2022 we decided to remove this question as we believe it was very similar to the rating ‘Overall Experience’, and by removing this question we have made it easier for reviewers to submit reviews.

As a result, we also have changed what we define as a positive review to any review with an Overall Experience of 4 or 5 (out of a maximum rating of 5). 

In the vast majority of cases where a reviewer answered ‘Extremely Likely’ or ‘Likely’ to the recommend question, they gave a rating of 4 or 5 for Overall Experience, and where this happens there is no change to the review score.

Very occasionally, this might not be the case, eg a reviewer might have answered ‘Likely’ but given a rating of ‘3’, and in this situation there will be a minor change to the review score.

The number of positive reviews to achieve up the 5 points remains the same as before - as outlined above in the section 'How the points for the number of positive reviews in the last 24 months are calculated'.