'Fundamental shift': How aged care and retirement living will change following the royal commission
Facing a fundamental shift, the aged-care industry says it will need to be innovative and work together to meet the “enormous” changes recommended by the royal commission.
This month, the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety made 148 recommendations after its two-year investigation. Among the recommendations was a new piece of legislation to cover the sector, and changing the definition of aged care to include supporting and caring for people to maintain their independence as they age.
Speaking at a Property Council event this morning, Ansell Strategic director Amber Cartwright said these changes would mean a “fundamental shift in how we do aged care in Australia”.
“When we look at how our systems currently work, we know that home care and aged care and retirement living, which sits on a tangent, don’t really talk to each other,” she said.
And, to make that happen, Australian Unity residential communities general manager Beverly Smith said the sector would need to work together.
“Older Australians want to live in a place where they can age in place, it’s an exciting time to look (at) diversifying models,” she said.
“I think we understand our market place very well and we understand changing consumer concern and I think it’s about organisations coming together to say, ‘How might we solve this particular problem in this particular geographical area?’
“I don’t think the government is going to arrive with extra billions and billions of dollars. We have got to find ways to think about the solution differently and that’s people getting together to solve it,” she said.
Colliers International healthcare and retirement living head Shalain Singh said the most likely change for the sector would be that bigger providers would absorb some of the smaller ones, but the split between them would remain the same (55 per cent not-for-profit, 40 per cent for-profit and 5 per cent state-operated).
“I don’t think composition is going to change that much between for-profit and not-for-profit but the number of actual providers will,” he said.
“You have got elements of status quo, elements of optimism and the third, well, ‘No, it is all getting too hard and I want to exit’. That applies for the NFPs and for-profits almost equally; it’s just that the transaction can happen a little bit easier in the not-for-profit world because typically a Uniting, Catholic, Baptcare, Southern Cross — any of these bigger chapters can simply absorb them and keep running.”
WA aged-care provider Bethanie Group chief executive Chris How told Commercial Real Estate that one of the principles of the proposed reforms was that aged care and ageing became a focus for all Australians.
“This is reflected in some of the recommendations calling on state and federal governments to assist and support some of the recommended reforms,” he said.
“All levels of government will have a critical role to play in the establishment of a national cabinet reform committee on ageing and older Australians, which will hopefully assist with integrating community support and social participation for all older Australians, not just retirement living residents.
“Other elements of recommended reform will expand primary care provisions for elders. This expanded scope and impact from the royal commission findings, if adopted, will have positive impacts on all elder Australians.”
