Aged care bed crisis leaves elderly stranded in hospitals

0:00Now this next issue came from one of our viewers on the text line last week, Diane. Diane, thank you so much. She reached out, concerned over the number of aged care beds available in Australia. She said the elderly who need care are currently stuck in hospitals taking up beds. Visit our hospital in Bunderburg, for example. The people can't go home on a package if they have dementia or they've suffered a stroke. They need 24-7 care. What is happening is a disgrace. Nurses and doctors are suffering too. Now for thousands of families across the country that's their everyday experience, clear to leave hospital without an aged care home to go to. Now complicating things, the federal government will soon lift funding for aged care placements, but below the rate of inflation and also wages. Now Anglicare says that it means that older Australians and the workers who care for them will bear the brunt of what is effectively a funding cut.

1:02And for more, we join now by Rob Stokes, who's the Chief Advocacy Officer at Anglicare. Thank you so much for being with us this morning. It's a huge complicated problem. What do we do about it? Well, effectively we need to ensure that we price things efficiently and we pay for things efficiently. Our frustration and our disappointment is it costs so much less for the taxpayer to house an older Australian in need of aged care in an appropriate residential aged care facility than it does in a public hospital. It costs about four times as much for the taxpayer to keep an older person safe in a hospital than it does in aged care. And in a hospital setting, it's a very clinical setting, it's cold, it's confusing. No one wants to be in a public hospital bed, particularly when you're older and vulnerable. And that can be very confusing and difficult for your family as well. And it costs more than it needs to. So taxpayers are paying more in a cost of living crisis than they need to for support that is urgently needed for thousands and thousands of older Australians and their families.

2:06Rob, the cost is obviously a major issue here. If we park that for one second, just navigating the system as well. Offer the nightmare. It is an absolute nightmare. And particularly when people at families are at their lowest too, they're trying to look after a loved one. Yet they're trying to navigate this incredibly complex and difficult system too to get them the appropriate level of care. What's the best advice to go about that? Well, the best advice is to get onto the my aged care portal on the internet or you can ring a 1-800 number. I think it's 1-800-2004-22 and get that support. And that will take you through the system. It's the system too complex. Do we need to have more of your system? That sounds easy, but having just been through it myself, you basically need to not work and not have a person to look after to be able to navigate that. And it can take a year to get assessed. Yeah, and this is the big challenge. So, you know, for the federal government, they've got to look at these processes. Obviously, ring Anglicare will do whatever we can to help in individual circumstances

3:09if we've got a place and a home nearby. But the problem is we're playing musical chairs. There simply aren't enough beds. And with this funding decision, it's much more difficult for aged care operators that want to expand to be able to expand when costs are rising and support from government is declining. How do we stop this cycle of fighting when it comes to funding appropriate levels for the sector, right? We just keep on revisiting the same issues and in the meantime, our most vulnerable sort of being left out in the car. Yeah, David, you're absolutely right. Right now, there are more than 3,600 older Australians in public hospitals that are blocking beds that are needed for acute patients that are blowing out emergency timelines. That's creating clinical risks for people who need urgent care. But at the same time, those people and their families don't want them to be there. So, if you can solve this, you're almost solving two problems. That's right, right? That's right. So, what we see happens a lot of the time is that there might be asset rich in the home,

4:09but requiring care straight away. What would your advice be to people that are in that situation? Where it takes a long time to sell a house? Yeah. Well, I've just been in that situation as well. And it's really distressing because if it was my dad, for example, who had had a couple of falls, mum couldn't look after him at home. It was very stressful for her. But at the same time, you feel very disoriented trying to manage this system. Dad was stressed at the time too, because he didn't want to be a burden. They'd been married for 65 years. This is a story that's repeated across the country every day. And my heart breaks every time I hear one of these stories. Anglican is doing everything we can, but there's only so much we can do within the funding parameters we have. The frustration here, David, to your point, is that we need the federal and state governments to sit down and figure out who does what appropriately. Do we need a greater interrogation into the system, like some form of inquiry, to see where those shortfalls are? I mean, we've looked at it before, but doesn't need a happy revisitor? Well, I mean, the Royal Commission, into aged care,

5:12had some very clear findings. And one of the clearest findings was that aged care needs to be appropriately funded for the costs at the time. This funding decision goes directly against what the Royal Commission said, which was if costs are increasing, funding should increase to match it. And that's not what's happening at the moment. OK, just before we let you go, for anyone that's sitting at home, for Dai and Bunderburg, who's concerned about this, first step, obviously, trying to get onto the list of just trying to get a my aged care assessment. OK, start that process. Then what? Contact Anglicare. Absolutely. I mean, we're there to help. And there are lots of wonderful providers, where charitable provider, we've been doing it for 170 years. But there are many other wonderful providers out there as well, but we're all... We can see some advice. Yeah, but we're all dealing with the same problems. And frighteningly, this means that we're having no choice, but to look at where we want to build more aged care beds and having the seas that's still feasible. There is assistance out there for those families going through it. But if you have found it challenging in your position,

6:14you know, the rest of us are... It's... It's... We're in No Man's Land. It's a scary time. Yeah, all right, Rob. Thank you very much. And thank you to Dai and Bunderburg for sending in that text message. You know, it meant a lot. It was a really important issue, and we'll keep on it.