Dramatic rethink of aged care needed as operators stare down $9.3b black hole

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With older Australians demanding more at-home care and nursing homes costing billions more each year to run, experts say aged care needs a dramatic overhaul. | ClayLucas

urges Canberra to adopt a “continuum of care” approach largely practised in its homeland. It would see a rapid expansion across Australia of retirement villages that are combined with aged care centres, so residents can age in one place.Among them is geriatrician Joseph Ibrahim, who in June told a conference of geriatric medicine specialists that Australia should get rid of all aged care homes. It did not go well.

A hospital bed costs significantly more than home care, which Newman estimates at $145 a day, while a day in a nursing home costs the public around $225. The health pricing authority’s most recent daily overall cost to taxpayers for an acute patient in a Victorian hospital is just over $6000 a day. Nick McDonald runs Prestige Inhome Care, a Melbourne-based company with 750 personal carers, nurses, cleaning staff and other workers like gardeners.

Australia’s aged care model is largely predicated on the conditions of older people in the 1990s when dementia was far less prevalent. Dementia’s ubiquity in aged care is the result of Australians living longer: a woman born in 1950 could expect 72 years of life; a man could expect 67. By 2022, a woman could live to 85, while a man could live to 81 years.

Victoria’s public homes generally have higher-care-needs residents. “They also have proper staffing and proper resourcing,” says Butler. “The homes are better run but simpler: it’s not about a grand piano and chandeliers and fancy artwork. There’s something wrong with the profit imperative in aged care.”

 

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