In future, Australia will spend much more on aged care. This increased spending needs to be well planned, so access is protected and all older people – regardless of income – get the care they need.
One proposal to fund the rising costs of aged care is a Medicare-style levy. However, this seemingly neat solution isn’t the answer to our aged care funding problems. Here’s why.
Aged care is one of the government’s biggest ongoing funding challenges. But for a sustainable system, we need to ensure everyone is paying their fair share. Here’s how to make it more equitable.
We measured financial literacy among 589 informal carers that substantially helped an older person make a decision about paying for residential aged care. Less than half were financially literate.
There are around 50 sexual assaults in Australian aged care homes every week. But staff are expected to assess the severity and impact of incidents without training.
Remaking aged care in Australia starts with embracing people-centred design. Instead of the institutional model with its focus on restraint, we need to understand and design for people’s needs.
Many Australians come to the end of their life while living in aged care. But damningly, the aged care royal commission found many residents have worse palliative care options than those living elsewhere.
The free market experiment in residential aged care is failing older Australians. Rebuilding trust in the system starts with valuing residents’ rights, and holding government and providers to account.
Most aged care homes are designed to be naturally ventilated. But when windows are closed to keep out the cold, poor ventilation appears to be common – and that’s a problem for infection control.
For many people living in residential aged care, their priority is quality of life, not length of life. So how do we reconcile this with the need to restrict visitors during the coronavirus pandemic?
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne