Older Queenslanders cross the border looking for a place in aged care

Families of elderly Queenslanders left languishing in hospitals are being forced to look over the border for beds in aged care due to the state’s critical shortage, a specialist nurse has warned.

State and territory leaders have issued a letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese urging him to honour his 2023 pledge to lift the Commonwealth’s hospital funding share to 45 per cent and properly resource aged care and NDIS services to ease pressure on the public system.

Gold Coast Health Service Rehabilitation, Aged Care and Community Services director Ben Chen said hospitals were frequently at “perennial capacity” and staff were battling pressures of wanting to help those patients affected by bed block as well as those waiting to be admitted.

“Staff are doing their best to support patient flow through the system but they do feel the pressure,” Dr Chen said.

“There’s pressure to let the person go as soon as they are safe.

“They also put this on themselves – they want to help the patients come in.

“Our staff don’t feel there’s any slack at all. That is what is having an impact on them.”

There are now 1126 patients in public hospital beds waiting for aged care placements.

One nurse, who assists families with finding nursing homes and asked not to be named, said Queenslanders were increasingly looking interstate for vacancies.

“For one client, we started in Brisbane, then extended to Sunshine and Gold coasts and Toowoomba and now they’re considering interstate,” she said.

“That’s what’s happening.”

Dr Chen, who has for 18 years specialised in caring for long-stay patients – those medically fit for discharge but without nursing homes or NDIS accommodation to go to – said the issue had been building for some time and peaked after the pandemic.

He warned the strain was only beginning, with the eldest baby boomers turning 80 next year.

“At the beginning of the ­pandemic, we heard the phrase ‘flattening the curve’ a lot, we saw the beginnings of needing at-home care,” he said.

“Obviously building facilities or making beds available will take time, and even if you have beds you might not have the staff for them.

“Every available body is on the deck.

“We are at the beginning of the wave, not even at the crest of the wave, and are ­already struggling.”

Dr Chen said there were no quick solutions to the problem, but that it required cooperation between political parties and all levels of government.

“At the moment, if anyone needs more than 10 hours of home care, or if their care hours are unpredictable, it’s a big step up to nursing home care,” he said.

“There’s a big gap in the middle there.

“If there’s anything that can immediately help, it is camaraderie with one another.

“All walks of political life recognising this to be an issue.”

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Originally published as: Aged care crisis forces Queensland families to look over the border for hospital beds