On page 5 of The Australian on Monday, the Australian Medical Association states that hospitals across the country are experiencing the highest levels on record of emergency presentations and bed blockers. Many are retirement village and aged care residents.
This points to another nail in the coffin for retirement villages being independent living.
The first nail in the coffin is the fact that we are not building any aged care beds and now most aged care homes are full. We are starting to hear retirement village residents who need to move to aged care can’t because they can’t get a bed.
Consider this: across the last three years only 2,954 new aged care beds have hit the market. KPMG says that represents 0.4% cumulative growth in number of beds. At the same time the number of people each year turning 85 increases by 2.5%.
The government says we need 8,800 new beds a year for the next 15 years to satisfy demand.
Deloitte has done a study on increasing demand for hospital beds (see the graph below). Virtually none are being built let alone refurbished. Deloitte states we need 580 new hospital beds built every month for the next 15 years.
Now check out the Retirement Living Council graph below which says 44% of village move to aged care beds and up to 31% move to hospital to die.
If there are no aged care beds or hospital beds they will stay in the village. A major problem for an operator who has staff levels to support independent living only, because duty of care gets involved. You can’t just wipe your hands and say none of our business.
We now know that Level 5 home care packages are due to be released in July 2025. The funding talked about is $80,000 a year. Village residents will look to use that to stay in the village longer.
What will this do to the character of the village? Independent or supported living?
An accelerating problem.
