The Seasons Aged Care CEO – and LASA Board member – has taken the industry to task on his LinkedIn profile, saying government funding can’t be blamed for all of the sector’s current woes with many home care providers failing to adapt to the new Consumer Directed Care (CDC) model.
“Sadly, there are many, many HCP providers charging significant sign-on and exit fees (exceeding $1,000 each in some cases), in addition to case-management and administration fees totaling as much as 45% of the HCP value.”
“Consumers, elderly Australians, are the ones now paying the price for the failure of provider organisations to act. This is not the fault of government or government policy – funds that should be being applied to the provision of services to the elderly in our community, are instead propping up expensive, out-dated, inefficient an unnecessary provider management structures.”
“As an industry, it is totally unacceptable for us to be arguing for additional tax-payer funds when we have not done all we can to ensure the efficient application of the funds already being provided.”
“The industry leading HCP providers, those that have embraced CDC for all it promises to the consumer (efficient, effective, affordable, quality service delivery on the consumers terms), are those with zero sign-on fees, zero exit fees, administration/overhead fees of 3-5% of the HCP value and case-management fees less than 10% of the HCP value.”
Mr Loudon has also taken his sword – or pen – to the Residential Aged Care (RAC) model, saying it is a “20th Century product” that lets down consumers and their families.
“RAC is no longer appropriate, the funding model is insufficient, inefficient and inadequate. ACFI is a nonsense funding instrument which cost providers more to manage than it delivers for service provision – 41% of RAC provider organisation in Australia run at a loss (StewartBrown 2018); the definition of an unsustainable industry.”
“There is nothing in the previous two paragraphs that any RAC operator would contest. Yet, almost to a man, provider organisations are deathly silent when it comes to proposing an alternate industry model. Instead, we just continue to scream still louder for additional tax-payer funding to prop up the dead horse that is RAC.”
“Adequate funding is a key driver of quality outcomes in Residential Aged Care, it’s not the only one, but providers are limited by what they have to spend. The questions are; where is the evidence that providers are in fact pursuing optimal organisational efficiency and where are the proposals from provider organisation for alternatives to the current approach?”
“Between 1950 (ish) and 2030, the tax-payer base in Australia will have reduced from 15:1 (taxpayers per person aged 65yrs and over) down to approximately 3.5:1 (taxpayers per person aged 65yrs and over). There is no more money to be squeezed out of tax-payers pockets, but we expect the number of elderly requiring services to increase by the hundreds of thousands, where will the funds come from?”
“As an industry (Aged Care) we cannot argue that we have been exemplary custodians of tax-payer funds.”
“As limited as they may be, incidence of abuse and neglect are not a symptom of funding stress and we cannot defend them, which is what we are doing by remaining silent in the face of public criticism – perception is reality.”
“Aged Care has a problem much greater than that inherent in current funding stresses. The Australian community have entrusted us to respect and care for their loved ones on their behalf; their clear determination is that we have breached that trust. Question is, what are we going to do to regain it?”
“We need to do much better.”