With an upcoming increase in mandatory care hours for residents in aged care facilities, some providers of aged care still struggle to fill beds and roles for aged care staff.
On October 1, 2024, the Department of Health and Aged Care will require that every resident receives an average 215 minutes of care in aged care homes, including 44 minutes of direct care from a registered nurse.
Currently, the requirement of care in residential aged care facilities sits at 200 minutes per resident until the changes commence next month.
Around 456,000 Australians live in residential care or use aged care services, including 193,000 Australians who live in permanent or respite residential care, according to recent data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
In an interview with the Weekly Source, Chief Executive Officer of Superior Care Group Russell Egan highlighted how workforce shortages in the aged care industry are affecting aged care homes.
“Registered nursing shortages are definitely still impacting our homes,” he said.
“There is a desperate shortage of skilled clinical management level candidates.”
Approximately 9,400 direct care roles were vacant in residential aged care facilities, in the Department of Health 2020 Aged Care Workforce Census.
Mr Egan explained that workplace shortages are contributing to bed vacancies in aged care homes in multiple ways.
“If you cannot do the raft of assessments upon arrival, you can’t prepare their care plans, so without all of your clinical management in place, you have to slow down your intake,” he said.
Industry projections from aged care accounting firm StewartBrown suggest the sector will be 21,200 beds short of projected demand by 2030 if there’s no major funding increase to aged care.
Approximately 370,000 people are employed in Australian aged care homes and services including residential aged care facilities, home care and the Commonwealth Home Support Program.
However, some Australians with low financial means may not be able to access residential aged care, even if vacancies for beds are available.
Mr Egan highlighted that for some providers, preference may be given to higher-paying prospective residents, compared to government-supported older Australians who are not required to pay the same amount.
“[Some] providers will be making decisions on [which] residents to take based on their financing requirements and if there aren’t suitable rate payers available, they’re going to potentially wait to find other more suitable residents.”
One media outlet has stated that residential aged care facilities earn $125 per day for residents who self-fund their accommodation, compared to just $62 per day from government-supported residents.
According to the Department of Health and Aged Care, providers ‘cannot charge a low means resident the agreed room price, even if their means increase, but their accommodation contribution may increase.’
While beds in aged care facilities lay empty, some older Australians requiring residential care are placed in hospital wards to receive nursing care.
After being approved for permanent residential aged care, older Australians waited an average of 34 days before they could begin living in the aged care facility, as per a 2023 GEN Aged Care Data report.
Almost 90 percent of these older Australians received low-level care at home. However, many older Australians move into aged care facilities because they can no longer live independently in their own homes, even with extra support.
Approximately 500 Australians were placed in Western Australian hospitals while waiting for services such as aged care for around a cumulative number of 40,000 extra days in hospital between 2021 and 2022.
Not only does the aged care workforce shortage mean that older Australians requiring residential aged care are placed in hospitals, but it also means that fewer hospital beds are available for Australians who need emergency care.
