ACAA criticises 2008-09 aged care allocations
The Aged Care Approvals Round (ACAR) place allocations for 2008 reinforces the message from the aged care industry that the current system is not viable, according to Aged Care Association Australia (ACAA) .
“ACAA has grave concerns about the Government’s decision not to address the real funding crisis impacting residential care,” said ACAA chief executive officer, Rod Young.
“To ensure the allocation was fully subscribed in the 2008-09 Aged Care Approvals Round, the Government had to reduce the planned allocation of residential places by 1,915 and direct these to community care,” said Mr Young.
“This simply demonstrates that aged care providers are voting with their cheque books and have substantially reduced their risk to future investment in aged care buildings,” he said.
“It is now costing aged care providers an average of $25,000 per annum in servicing the cost of building a new aged care place which is now averaging $200,000 per place”.
“2011 sees a very significant growth in aged care for the next 30 years. Failure to build now will mean excessive unmet demand and very long waiting lists from 2012 onwards, unless Government fixes these problems with capital raising,” he said.
