00:00It's a busy morning at St Vincent's emergency department in Melbourne and many of the patients
00:07are elderly. This man was brought in after blacking out on the street.
00:11Have you had other falls in the past? Geriatrician Richard Kane is doing the rounds of the older
00:18patients. Being in hospital for an older person is a more risky experience than being in their
00:23own homes in many ways. Beverly Minogue's knee gave out last month and she was unable to climb
00:28the stairs to her bedroom. I've got osteoarthritis that's bone on bone. When the 85 year old went to
00:34emergency she was expecting a lengthy hospital stay but thanks to a new program which embeds a
00:40geriatrician in the emergency department she went home the next day with daily visits from nurses
00:45and specialists instead. I think it's wonderful you don't have to be stuck in the hospital and
00:51not be able to sleep. We find that people recover more quickly in their own environment. Hospital
00:57data shows that more than 100 older patients have been diverted from wards like this one
01:02to either home, rehabilitation or aged care over a one year period and more than 900 days of in-hospital
01:10care have been avoided. On any given day three or four patient beds are available for other patients
01:16upstairs. Programs like this are increasing as the number of hospital beds per 1,000 people aged over
01:2265 declines, halving in the last 30 years. The peak doctors group says any incoming federal government
01:29must prioritize a new longer-term funding agreement for hospitals. We also want to make sure that that
01:34funding drives the kind of care that we want and that our elderly Australians need. Labor has endorsed
01:41an increase in federal funding but not yet brokered a new agreement. The coalition says it would negotiate
01:46a new agreement as a matter of urgency.
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