The retirement sector is going to have to move into assisted living and ultimately private aged care. Baby Boomers, aged 61-79 now, will demand it.
With the funnelling of older Australians into residential aged care already hitting full occupancy, and new village legislation stating a resident has the right to remain in retirement living, aged care is the future village business model.
StewartBrown Senior Partner Grant Corderoy, whose work is on speed dial by the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, made this point at our Salesforce Plan T lunch last Thursday.
Grant is advising his clients that the retirement living customer is going to demand “one move”. They are going to demand to be cared for until the end of life. Grant is now advising clients to build new villages with Class 9C homes, designed for compliance under federal payment programs.
Interestingly, the Retirement Living Council (RLC) is taking Department of Health, Disability and Ageing bureaucrats to LDK Seniors’ Living’s new private aged care village, Amberfield in Weston Creek, Canberra, on Thursday.
This is LDK’s second private aged care village in the ACT and all available stock has been sold “without one dollar of marketing” says CEO Byron Cannon. Word of mouth has driven sales, including acceptance of the upfront membership model rather than the back end DMF.
The new customer is speaking.
Grant says “We're at a stage now where the operators almost have to take into their own hands (their future) and be innovative and have courage to try new lines of care, service delivery, new lines of accommodation, look at service - retirement living and assisted living”.
“They've got to have courage to not only invest, but they've got to have the courage to change their business model to adopt a much more expansive approach to care delivery.”
Want to know more about private aged care? Ask the Visionaries Anything at our Breakfast series over the next two weeks. Register here.
We can see that private aged care, like Grant, will be mainstream within five years.
