industry & reform
Waiting game
Long wait for home care , but aged care spending on the up .
By Conor Burke
The latest report into government
services has found older Aussies are still facing long waits to receive aged care services , with wait times for high level home care packages at an average of 28 months .
The Productivity Commission Report on Government Services 2021 shows that in 2019 – 20 median elapsed times for a Home Care Package ranged from 6 months for a Level 1 package to 28 months for a Level 4 package , an improvement on the same period in 2018 – 19 .
The time between being accepted for residential aged care and taking a place in a facility takes an average of nearly five months ( 148 days ) the report found , while residential aged care occupancy is at its lowest for a decade at 88.3 per cent . The report points to the preference to remain at home , with personal circumstances ( such as selling a home ) and cost or location given as reasons for this delay .
In the year between 2019 – 20 , 238,778 older people were in permanent care with another 65,709 in respite care , while there were 829,193 older CHSP clients nationally and a further 171,797 older clients of Home Care Packages .
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We do not have a system of rewarding good providers by allowing them to expand .
Government spending on aged care services reached $ 21.5 billion for the reporting period , which equates to $ 5063 per older person , up from $ 20.5 billion in 2018 – 19 and $ 19 billion in 2017 – 18 .
Residential aged care services accounted for the largest proportion of expenditure at $ 13.6 billion and home care and home support services accounted for around $ 6.7 billion .
COTA chief executive Ian Yates told Aged Care Insite that the overall figures are concerning , but they do not reflect the extra HCPs that the Government has announced since the end of the last financial year , with 10,000 coming in the MYEFO statement – at a cost of $ 850 million .
Yates is more concerned with the long term planning and the repercussions of a slow drip-feed of HCPs .
“[ The government ] needs to quite urgently announce a timetable for [ releasing HCPs ]. Because if you ’ re a provider now you can ’ t plan to recruit and train additional staff right now until the government makes an announcement , because you don ’ t know how many more are going to come ,” Yates said .
“ If they put 60,000 packages out tomorrow , you couldn ’ t fill them because we don ’ t have the staff to do it and if we did , I would think we ’ d be in a very dangerous situation because it would be putting on untrained people into people ’ s homes .”
Workforce is a continual issue for the sector , with figures from the report showing that in 2016 , 28.5 per cent of full time equivalent ( FTE ) direct care staff at aged care homes were either nurses or allied health professionals , down from 31.8 per cent in 2012 .
“ All of those workforce quality issues are quite fundamental . And again , you ’ ve got providers out there who have different staffing mixes and who pay people more , who train them better and consequently have very low turnover and manage to attract people . And then you have the others who have to reverse and yet they ’ re all operating in the same financial and regulatory environment , and we do not have a system of rewarding good providers by allowing them to expand ,” said Yates .
The Australian population is ageing rapidly , with the proportion of people aged 65 years and over set to rise from 15 per cent at 30 June 2017 to between 21 and 23 per cent in 2066 , so aged care will be more important than ever in future .
Even with the influx of government spending , Yates believes more needs to be done .
“ The Royal Commission has flagged that its recommendations will come to between a 100 per cent to 200 per cent increase . I personally think that ’ s not viable . But , I think that we are not talking about incremental shifts in funding , we are talking about very substantial shifts … you ’ re talking about five to $ 6 billion a year on top of the $ 21 billion budget . And then they absolutely need to pay more for residential care , but they need to look at how to do that without rewarding and keeping poorer providers alive .” ■
14 agedcareinsite . com . au