Funding should prioritise in-home aged care: Minister

A new aged-care taskforce will do what the royal commission couldn’t – devise a funding system that keeps nursing homes viable and supports people to stay home for as long as possible.

CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA, Newswire Photos. Aged care minister Anika Wells has created a new taskforce to determine the best approach to funding aged care in the long term. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

A new aged-care taskforce will do what the aged care royal commission couldn’t – devise a funding system that keeps nursing homes financially viable and supports older Australians’ growing preference to remain in their own homes as long as possible, Aged Care Minister Anika Wells says.

In a speech to the National Press Club on Wednesday, Ms Wells will also reveal figures showing a “major shift in financial performance” of residential aged-care homes. After the government’s first quarterly report for the September quarter last year showed 66 per cent of residential aged-care providers operating at a loss, the December quarter figure has improved to 54 per cent.

“Our reforms are making a tangible difference to providers,” Ms Wells says. ”For the first time in a decade, workers, residents and stakeholders have reason to feel optimistic. We expect the (March) quarterly financial report … to continue the upward viability trend,” she says.

But the improved figures are bolstered by new government funding that has flowed to the sector from October last year, based on paying for additional minutes of care to nursing home residents.

While the funding for 200 minutes of care per resident, including 40 minutes from a registered nurse, is now in providers’ accounts, the legal requirement to deliver additional care minutes doesn’t start until this October.

Aged care is one of the government’s biggest spending programs, costing the budget $33bn in 2022-23, despite the ongoing financial difficulties faced by nursing home providers.

Ms Wells says the government spent its first 12 months in office “triaging an absolute crisis” in aged care, but the time has come to take a long-term look at how older Australians will live their best lives into old age, and how it can be paid for.

“The Baby Boomers are coming. Within a decade our nation will have, for the first time in history, more people aged over 65 than under 18,” she says.

“The next generation of people entering aged care are going to want a different model and standard of care than those before them. The government will invest in the care that older Australians actually want – and they want to be at home.”

Ms Wells says the taskforce has a thorny issue to tackle – the best way to fund the sector, a problem that proved too much for the aged care royal commission in its report in February 2021.

One proposal floated by aged-care providers is for wealthier nursing home residents to be charged more for day-to-day food and services.

The new quarterly report also shows nursing homes were averaging 189 minutes of care per resident, per day, up slightly from 187 minutes in the September quarter and moving closer towards the sector average of 200 care minutes per day, which becomes mandatory from October 1.

The May budget included $11.3bn over four years to cover a mandated 15 per cent pay rise for more than 250,000 frontline aged-care staff. The higher wages are expected to attract more workers to the sector.