Yes, an Australia-wide review of the residential aged care system was long overdue given the ongoing train wreck which started in the Howard Government era and continued through to the Morrison Government era and hasn’t yet come to a complete halt.
Although the Albanese Government's 20 per cent increase ($3.9 billion) in federal government funding for residential aged care and home care in 2022-23 was a promising sign. As was the $23 billion over the 4 years from 2022-23 to improve aged care infrastructure and services that provide support to older Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people and to older individuals from diverse communities and regional areas.
Although the fact remains that between 2012 to 2022 bed numbers in residential aged care facilities were effectively being privatised and creating risk with:
government managed beds down from 10,825 to 8,170;
Not-for profit managed beds up from 107,410 to 120,053;
privately managed beds up from 66,335 to 91,658; and
the number of residential aged care providers falling to just 811 business entities by 2022.
Yes, the ageing population is also growing. By June 2022 the number of people 65 years of age and older composed 17 per cent of the total population at an est. 3.3 million individuals and, there were 180,750 older people in permanent residential aged care – 58 per cent of those being aged 85 years to 100+ years. These individuals were accommodated across 219,965 permanent residential aged care places as of 30 June.
Should we panic at these numbers? No, not quite yet.
Admissions to permanent residential aged care across Australia between July 2020 to June 2021 totalled 67,146 older people.
In the same financial year these 67,146 people entered residential care and a total of 2,823 exited due to death. By 2025 the majority of those admitted in 2020-21 will have been discharged from permanent residential aged care by death, given that for at least half of all permanent care residents appear to have a length of stay after admission of between 24 to 48 months.
In fact, of the 180,750 older people in permanent residential aged care in June 2022, it is possible that up to 95,797 will have been recorded as discharged by death before 2027.
However, by 2027 Australia’s population 65 years of age and older will be est. 5.2 million or est. 18% of a total national population which might have reached 29.2 million persons by then, according to projection scenarios by the Australian Dept. of Health & Aged Care and Australian Bureau of Statistics. Out of that older population pool as many as 300,000 might by then require some form of residential aged care (permanent or respite) which potentially creates a bed shortfall risk.
That bed shortfall combined with the growing amount of federal funding required to keep government & not-for-profit operators afloat and satisfy the demands of a profit-driven private sector means that decisions have to be made within this present election cycle on residential aged care costs and infrastructure.
Whatever the Albanese Government decides will probably satisfy very few — because that is the nature of the collective political beasts roaming the Arena at present, as well as the mood of the national electorate watching this brutal Roman Circus.
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