Ministers meet to talk $1bn aged care bed block crisis

The nation’s health leaders are demanding “urgent action” from the federal government to tackle a $1bn aged care crisis that is forcing thousands of elderly patients to remain in hospital, creating critical bed blockages.

Federal and state health ministers met in Perth on Friday to discuss a report that revealed almost 2500 elderly patients ready for discharge were stuck in public hospitals, waiting for an aged care bed.

State ministers spoke at a press conference together after the meeting, telling reporters an agreement had been reached to undertake urgent work, led by Queensland, in better defining the problem and better collecting the data.

SA health minister Chris Picton said that with an ageing population there was only going to be more pressure on the health system.

“Right across the country, there are patients who are stranded, who are stuck in those hospital beds,” he told reporters.

“It’s not a good outcome for them to be stuck in hospital for months and months when they don’t need to be, but this is also an awful situation for other patients who need hospital care.

“This is the equivalent of 880,000 nights every year of our public hospitals taken out of the system, and the cost is about $1bn across the whole system. So this is an urgent issue.”

NSW Health Minister Ryan Park said while waiting to see how many beds were needed the problem would just get worse.

“I’m not prepared to do that,” he said.

“[Hospitals] were never designed to be aged care homes. That’s not the way it works in this country.

“We’ve got to get back to a situation where the Commonwealth takes the load for aged care, and we do the delivery of acute health services.”

A report prepared by the SA government was presented to the meeting, which said there was a critical shortage of aged care facilities.

Federal Health Minister Mark Butler said the ongoing wave of baby boomers entering the aged care system had sparked the crisis.

“There’s no area of policy where we’ve invested more money over the last three years, and more time and energy than aged care,” Mr Butler told 7News before the meeting on Friday.

“Because when we came to government, staff were leaving in droves, and there were no new facilities being built.

“We know we need to build enormous numbers of new facilities to accommodate the baby boomer generation, which is upon us now.

“That’s why we are providing record funding to state governments to support their hospital operations and targeted investment to help older Australians either avoid having to go to hospital in the first place, if they can be cared for out in the community or, if they are in hospital, moving through the system as quickly as possible.

“It’s not perfect, right now, we’ve got to do more, and I’m meeting with my state and territory health colleagues [today] to work through how we can do more.”