Fuel, Ageing, Budget: Responsibility required

How did Australia get to this: our Prime Minister jumping on planes to beg other countries for fuel and fertiliser? Answer: good people failed to stand up.

Aged care is the same as fuel, but different. Informed fuel people did not effectively raise concerns about dependence on others, then fuel became a crisis because of outside factors.

This video of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese from 2020 is a timely watch.

Aged care is our own creation that we can see, touch – and change if we stand up.

The system is going to crash. We all know that in 2027, the Baby Boomers start hitting 82 years of age, the entry age for home care (Support at Home). This factual jump is a 75% increase in real people requiring aged support from our sectors and the health system.

The future reality is already here

But for the past week (and months), all the talk has been about the Federal Budget allocation of paltry funds for today’s already overburdened system. Why waste our breath?

The Budget is almost irrelevant. The Government doesn’t have the cash and the demand is here now.

Today, there are 105,000 real people waiting to be assessed for a Support at Home package plus up to 100,000 people approved but no packages available. Maths says within 24 months, it will be twice this number. We know this.

3,300 people are in hospital beds waiting for an aged care bed, which are all full. Those hospital people are being repeatedly declined an aged care bed because they have a complex (e.g. dementia or bariatric) diagnosis and our aged care homes don’t want them because they are full and can pick and choose. We know this.

Aged care operators and investors won’t fund new aged care builds because they won’t make a return and quixotic regulators live in an unreal world determined to prevent operators from being ‘investable’. We know this too.

And the prevalence of dementia will also increase by 75% within 24 months while the ratio of older people living alone is 45% and rising. Support at Home as we know it does not support these dementia sufferers. And we know this.

The sector must stand up

So, it is us, the people who know and who are at the coalface that have to stand up, because if we don’t, who will?

Fuel and fertiliser are fundamental to living; it grows and transports our food, it gives the energy to power the health system, it gives us water and sanitation.

How we treat our citizens, particularly the elderly, is in the same realm, and directly reflects on us.

We Australians say this is the country of a fair go and mateship, where everyone deserves equal opportunities, compassion, and fair treatment, regardless of background. It’s about helping others and being ‘mates’.

Will aged care stand up against this definition in years to come? It can.

World class

While challenged, the Australian health system at this point in time is still world class.

Our health and aged care sector was rated one of the best in the world for our performance through COVID (Out of 202 countries studied, we were in the Top 10 – where life expectancy actually increased).

The leaders in our sector are without parallel when you consider they have operated complex and large scale operations, barely achieving cost recovery, for 10 years now, plus through a Royal Commission impacting public sentiment and creating strategic uncertainty, COVID, several complete changes to operating regulations, new technology demands, and workforce shortages.

Aged care is a $40 billion sector with 1.5 million customers and 400,000 staff.

This resilience, this resourcefulness and this compassion for older Australians now needs to be channeled to stand up and take Australia to a better place.

The big steps ahead

Many things need to be done, but simplistically, we at DCM believe the following are the big steps:

• Recognise that the landscape will change. The Government cannot maintain the design of aged care as it is today and the customer will be fearful as it becomes apparent the system is failing and be seeking alternative solutions.
• Each business needs to strategise a complete change in operations within three to five years to survive a different services and funding landscape, delivering services customers want and need.
• The sector, not the Government, needs to execute a public honesty campaign to explain the ageing challenge, taking the Government along as well.
• Dementia requires special attention as a national priority.

If we execute these steps well, Australians will understand and come along for the ride. If we don’t take these steps, aged care will be just like the fuel crisis but we will not be able to place the Prime Minister on a plane to go beg for solutions from other countries.

The dominos are about to fall. To our thinking, we all have a responsibility to stand up now, and retain our leading position in the care world.