State and Territory Health Ministers have rejected the Commonwealth's latest public hospitals funding offer. The sticking point is the increasing strain on public hospitals being caused by elderly patients waiting for aged care home places.
00:00More than 3,000 aged care patients are currently in public hospital beds, a 25% increase in
00:09just three months according to new collective figures released by the states and territories.
00:15Those patients are medically fit for discharge but stuck in hospital while waiting for a
00:20federal government residential aged care bed.
00:23The report has noted a significant shortfall in aged care beds with about 800 delivered
00:28by the government last financial year compared to an estimated annual demand of 10,600.
00:35The states and territories estimate the cost to taxpayers is $1.2 billion a year.
00:42The report's release coincides with a funding stout between the states and territories and
00:47the Albanese government over Commonwealth funding for public hospitals.
00:51The Health Minister Mark Butler has met with his state and territory counterparts in Brisbane
00:56where they failed to reach a deal.
00:58The ABC understands Anthony Albanese has offered $21 billion over five years as well as an
01:05additional $2 billion over four years to deal with the problem of aged care patients occupying
01:12public hospital beds.
01:14Mark Butler remains confident a deal can be reached before the end of the year.
01:18I still feel very confident we can do this by Christmas.
01:22The one reliable thing about Australian politics is that state governments ask for more money
01:27from the Commonwealth.
01:28We've got at the moment $33 billion additional funding for hospitals on the table as well as
01:34more money to help smooth the path of older patients through the hospital system.
01:39Currently some of those questions are going to have to be resolved by our bosses, the Prime
01:43Minister and Premiers though.
01:45President of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Geriatric Medicine, Professor Sue
01:50Curl, says there's no easy solution.
01:53It's the perfect storm.
01:56There are more older people.
01:58We are ageing rapidly in Australia.
02:00There's lots of baby boomers coming through.
02:03There's more people with dementia because that's related to age.
02:07There are more complications in terms of the funding for aged care and that's a lot worse in the last month with the new Aged Care Act.
02:18The Act itself is great, but the costings, the way costs are calculated for each older person, that's changed a lot.
02:30There is no easy fix because we're dealing with an older population.
02:36The issue is, yeah, we were meant to have around 10,000 new beds in the last financial year.
02:41Instead, 800 were delivered.
02:44It's expensive to bill.
02:46You're looking at, you know, around $900,000 per bed to build and there's a lag time.
02:54So there's a lot of work to be done by the Commonwealth to encourage providers to build more beds, where I think occupancy currently in aged care homes is about 94%.
03:10It should be around 90%.
03:14So we've got a bit of work to do there to enable more beds to be available for older people.
03:20And the right sort of beds.
03:22We need beds for people who have dementia and may need extra care.
03:28That in itself is a whole problem that the Aged Care Royal Commission brought up.
03:33And there's issues about families being a little reluctant to look at their family member going into aged care or an older person not wanting to go.
03:44I mean, no one really wants to go into aged care.
03:47So there's a whole lot of barriers being put up.
03:51And we have a lot of work to do to address those.
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