This past weekend, the NSW Health Minister, Ryan Park, made it clear what keeps him awake at night – the 1,100 hospital beds with elderly patients who are waiting to be discharged into aged care.
To put this in perspective, this is the equivalent of two Sydney hospitals.
At the same time, there are new record numbers of elderly patients waiting to be discharged into aged care in South Australia and Queensland. Ambulances banking up at WA hospital is also at never-before-seen levels. This is a shocking situation.
But there is a part solution: retirement villages. For a start, we report in today’s newsletter on a new initiative led by the NSW Government, with the support of Blacktown City Council, to add a retirement village and an aged care home next to Blacktown Hospital.
They recently amended the Blacktown Local Environment Plan 2015 to include the senior housing provision in the Blacktown Health & Education Precinct. The village and RAC will be the 2,791m² flagship site within the Blacktown Health & Education Precinct, ‘adjacent to existing public and proposed private hospitals’.
Behind the scenes Shalain Singh (Managing Director and CEO, Arrow Advisory Group) is guiding and offering the projects to operators with a fast-track completion date as early as 2028.
A planning miracle!
State Governments have a gun against their head, but also have vacant land next to hospitals, available for development. Not to mention car parks that could be moved underground, with seniors living (ILUs and aged care) located above.
Ryan Park says the Commonwealth must step up and better manage and fund aged care, which is adding stress to the NSW health system. But new thinking can solve the problem and villages are a key.
DCM Group CEO Chris Baynes wrote an Opinion piece on 16 October: Our big idea: co-located retirement villages can solve hospital ‘bed occupancy’ in 16 weeks.
“Our thinking: Australia’s 700 co-located retirement villages will have 6,560 village homes vacated each year, or 126 every week. Why doesn’t the sector turn each vacated home over to a human being currently stuck in hospital waiting for age supportive accommodation?
“In 16 weeks, the 2,000 hospital beds will be cleared.”
Why not?
