The most troubling statement that the chairman of Southern Cross Christopher Fisher made on Radio 4's Today Programme this morning was that in any of its typical care homes with a capacity for 50 residents, Southern Cross makes a profit if 46 of the beds are occupied and a loss if occupancy falls to 43.
With so many unknowns, the programme teaches participants to treat their start-up as if it were a typical research project, amenable to the same iterative process of hypothesis testing and experimentation.