Aged care: A ‘challenged’ industry
Australia’s aged care industry faces greater demands on the delivery of care and services with less expenditure, with the daily reality to meet care needs with funding continuing to fall well short, according to one of the country’s age services body.
Patrick Reid, LASA chief executive, says there has been little regard shown to aged care providers from the Department of Social Services.
Patrick Reid, Leading Age Services Australia (LASA) chief executive, opens up in a written statement about the organisation’s concerns about the future of residential age care.
“A provider’s daily struggle is to continue to deliver quality care, meet the unnecessary demands of burdensome red tape and marry this with the needs of the individual,” Mr Reid says.
“It is not surprising that in order to provide high quality consumer centric services that our industry needs to be enabled to function efficiently and effectively,” he adds.
The seminal piece by the Productivity Commission, Caring for Older Australians, was unusually accepted by the majority of the industry as a blue print for reform. Part of that report was understanding and responding to the real costs of care.
According to Mr Reid, while LASA understands that governments shy away from quantifying actual costs in such a burgeoning industry, care providers are “not afforded that luxury”.
For private operators, Mr Reid claims they will now face another loss of around 5% from their bottom line with the removal of the Commonwealth Aged Care Payroll supplement in the recent budget.
“With the tight regulatory and funding environment aged care providers are unable to ‘re-coup’ this loss; ironically it is a result of the unique environment that providers operate within that saw the supplement offered in the first place, something that has been in existence since 1968.
“The reallocation of the Workforce Supplement back into the Conditional Adjustment Payment was certainly welcome, but one needs to remember that it is simply the return of funding that was removed in 2012. So, today ,the industry is funded at 2012 rates with additional loss for private providers.
Mr Reid claims that, for providers, with the 1 July 2014 aged care reforms, if a large number of consumers opt for daily payments over lump sum bonds, a crisis in capital availability is a reality.
“One must question the government’s motives. What chance of viability is there for a small operator with a single stand alone facility of 60 to 100 beds? Is the end game plan an industry of a small number of very large providers holding 90% of beds?” he asks.
“Despite continuous advocacy from LASA, our members have been shown little regard from the Department of Social Services with information regarding legislative change coming too late for any meaningful planning.
“An echo of the word ‘soon’ still rings in our ears as the consistent response to our inquiries.”
According to Mr Reid, providing care is “not an easy business”.
“I am comforted that so many age service staff I meet have the innate ability to care. This makes my role of supporting and promoting the industry so much easier. With the level of government regulation and funding, however, we are not operating in a vacuum.”
Ultimately, ‘funding certainty’, for Mr Reid, is vital. “In order to exercise choice, the industry reasonably expects a high level funding certainty. LASA urges the federal government to carefully consider any further erosions to the financial sustainability of an already challenged industry,” he says.
