16 April 2021
The ANMF (SA Branch) has long maintained that the devastating shortages of aged care services and staff contribute to the crushing workloads of emergency departments and hospitals throughout the country.
“We have loudly campaigned on this issue and successive Governments have known about it for years and yet nothing significant has been done to address the chronic understaffing which is at the heart of the problem,’’ ANMF (SA Branch) CEO/Secretary Adj Associate Professor Elizabeth Dabars AM said.
Now staggering new figures reveal the enormity of the problem with the Australian Medical Association estimating that over the year up until 30 June 2021, there will have been 27,569 admissions of residents from nursing homes to hospitals that were potentially avoidable, costing $312 million and accounting for 159,693 hospital patient days.
The AMA says comprehensive economic modelling has identified savings of $21.2 billion over four years by avoiding unnecessary trips to hospital by people aged 65 and over from the community and from nursing homes.
That figure comprises four-year savings from potentially avoidable admissions to private and public hospitals from nursing homes ($1.4 billion), from older people in the community ($18.2 billion), those transferred to emergency departments but not admitted ($497 million), re-presentations to emergency departments within 30 days ($138 million) and people waiting in hospital for a place in a nursing home ($887 million).
The AMA believes that these hospital admissions, presentations and stays could be prevented through better provision of primary care in aged care settings. This means investing in GPs and Registered Nurses who can provide proper person-centred care and continuity of care including medication management.
Details of the modelling are contained in a new report from the AMA,
‘Putting Health Care Back Into Aged Care’ released this week - the centrepiece of the AMA’s continuing campaign ‘Care Can’t Wait’.
And yet the report comes in a week in which it was revealed more than three-quarters of all regional aged care homes are losing money, despite the $21 billion of taxpayers’ money funnelled into the sector every year.
According to the ABC’s The 7.30 Report, industry experts are warning that 166 regional homes across the country are at risk of closure, some imminently, due to dire financial circumstances. Some are already closed.
This only underscores the ANMF view that there must be full accountability for any government aged care funding, full transparency.
Advocate Dr Sarah Russell from Aged Care Reform Now agrees.
"I find it extraordinary that taxpayers’ money is going into the aged care sector, a whopping $21 billion is spent on aged care, and the public really have no way of knowing how that money has been spent," she told The 7.30 Report.
Grattan Institute health economist Stephen Duckett agrees.
"At the moment, there are two real problems with aged care funding," he told the ABC. "First of all, [there's] a total lack of transparency, and secondly, a lack of regulation and accountability. It's hard to trace where the money goes."
“How many more alarm bells need to be rung before something is finally done. The Morrison Government simply must act now to fix our broken aged care system,’’ Ms Dabars said.
“Every day they delay is another day elderly residents suffer, another day our emergency departments are bloated beyond capacity, impacting adversely on every other ward, another day patient care is missed or delayed.
“The knock-on effects of our failed aged care system are very real - everybody suffers: our vulnerable elderly, hospital staff and their patients and a tax-paying community who must scratch their heads in jaw-dropping bewilderment at where all their billions go,’’ Ms Dabars said.
“It is simply unfathomable the Australian people are not allowed to know just how and where their hard-earned dollars are being invested.
“Certainly not towards the optimal care of our frail elderly who deserve so much better in their twilight years.’’