00:02It's an ageing problem that cost South Australian taxpayers more than $123 million last financial year.
00:11We now have a dollar figure for one of the drivers that lead to ambulances on the ramp.
00:18Earlier this week almost 500 older patients were ready to be discharged but remained in SA hospitals because there were
00:26no aged care beds for them to go.
00:28In some cases we know that people have been in that situation for almost four years now.
00:33The system is in crisis in terms of availability of aged care beds quite clearly.
00:38Doctors say the number of aged care beds hasn't kept up with the state's ageing population
00:43and the problem could get worse with the number of South Australians aged over 70 estimated to nearly double over
00:51the next 30 years.
00:53This is not just an economic problem, it's a human problem.
00:56People are becoming much more fearful about the need that they might have to access aged care in the future.
01:02Prompting state and territory health ministers to launch a coordinated call for federal action.
01:08We are calling on the federal government to particularly do something in that intervening period between now
01:13and when the 5,000 new beds per year they've committed for Australia comes online.
01:18We need more home care packages, we need more workers to deliver those services, we need more residential aged care
01:26and more aged care beds.
01:28The federal government says it's funding grants for more than 260 aged care beds in metropolitan Adelaide
01:34and rolling out an additional 32,000 supported home places across the country.
01:39That's great.
01:40So how do we Ne personnages make a change?
Comments