Are retirement villages ready for the future of health and care? No.

As we head into 2026, retirement village operators are staring down a very different future to the one imagined even a few years ago – and most are nowhere near prepared for what’s coming.

That reality lands sharply in the special final edition of SATURDAY for 2025, featuring a cover interview with Chris Blake, CEO of St Vincent’s Health Australia – the largest Not For Profit health and aged care provider in the country.

St Vincent’s is not tweaking at the edges. It is pursuing an ambitious strategy to shift half of its care delivery to the home or into virtual models by 2030. That’s just four years away.

Why? Because, as Chris puts it, the maths don’t lie.

Hospitals and aged care homes are already overwhelmed by demand from older Australians – and we haven’t even reached the real peak of the Baby Boomer wave. Costs are rising, labour is constrained, and chronic disease and dementia are accelerating. On current settings, the system cannot cope.

Chris is blunt about the built environment that underpins care. The design of the average retirement village or residential aged care home, he says, “has not changed for decades.”

His warning is sharp: “If you’re driving looking in the rear vision mirror, you’re likely to hit something coming the other way.”

Too much of the health and ageing system – from hospitals to villages – is still designed for the past, not the road ahead.

St Vincent’s future model points clearly to what’s coming:

• hospital-level care delivered in the home;
• rehabilitation, palliative care and GEM outside hospital walls;
• stepped-down acute care for older people;
• ongoing virtual monitoring and early intervention, and
• a far stronger emphasis on prevention, much earlier.

(“GEM outside hospital walls” refers to the expansion of Geriatric Evaluation and Management – GEM – services from traditional inpatient hospital units into a patient's home or community environment). 

These are not far-off ideas – they are being built now.

The question for village operators is simple: are these models even on your horizon?

Demand for vertical retirement living is clearly rising – and in high-density settings, delivering integrated health, virtual care and visiting clinical services is inherently easier.

New developments like Hyecorp’s Hyegrove at Willoughby show how proximity, scale and design can support more high-level care models.

But what about the vast network of broadacre villages – hundreds of homes spread over large sites, often staffed by a man and a pony?

How do these communities partner with providers like St Vincent’s or Amplar Health to deliver Hospital in the Home, monitoring and end-of-life care?

And how many operators can say, hand on heart, that they have the technology, workforce and clinical partnerships to support residents to age – and die – at home?

As explored in SATURDAY, the conclusion is unavoidable: prevention and wellness are no longer optional extras – they are the only viable way to ease pressure on health and aged care systems.

Retirement villages are uniquely positioned to lead – particularly on loneliness, physical activity, early intervention and social connection. Yet too often, these efforts are piecemeal, operator-by-operator, rather than approached as a sector-wide imperative.

We can no longer afford to drive looking backwards.

If the sector is serious about its customers in 2030, it’s time to stop admiring the rear-view mirror – and press the accelerator.