With its hospital and aged care beds full, the NSW outback town of Broken Hill is a microcosm of what is happening in communities across the country – is a ‘low care’ alternative the answer?
Aged care and retirement living provider Southern Cross Care Broken Hill (SCCBH) has announced it will form a partnership with Southern Cross Care Queensland (SCCQ) with a Management Services Agreement to formally commence from 1 July 2024.
Founded in 1974 by a branch of New South Wales Southern Cross Homes Inc, SCCBH has historically operated as a stand-alone entity – but has run into trouble in recent years.
An audit by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission (ACQSC) at its 121-bed St Anne’s Residential Aged Care Home in February last year found the home was non-compliant across all eight Aged Care Quality Standards and had to put a plan for continuous improvement in place.
Local media has reported that the provider has been unable to keep all its 261 beds open because of a lack of qualified staff – last year, the organisation received around $4.4 million of taxpayers' money to address a shortfall of Registered Nurses.
As a consequence, the local 98-bed base hospital has up to 40 people that cannot be discharged because there is nowhere for them to go.
Our understanding is around 30 of those patients only require low care.
“Do they need high care or is it more of a low care?”
Speaking on ABC Radio Broken Hill, SCCQ CEO Jason Eldering said it was time for a rethink of how communities deliver quality care to their older people.
“Some of those people who are waiting aged care placement really could do more with a sort of a low care offering as opposed to a high care offering,” he said.
“We’ve got to be mindful of what do the people who are sitting inside the hospital truly need: do they need high care or is it more of a low care?”
“I think we should engage with community, listen to community and make sure that we build and provide appropriate models of accommodation and care for each community that we serve.”
Jason Eldering, SATURDAY – Subscribe here
Can Shared Care fill the ‘low care’ gap?
Jason pledged to work with Government to ensure that there is further investment in terms of new aged care beds for the community.
As he stated, is this the only option?
We have reported the Government is actively looking at how the Retirement Living Council’s proposed Shared Care model – enabling older Australians living in retirement villages to pool their home care funding – could be rolled out under the new Support at Home program starting from 1 July next year.
There is also potential for care campuses – large scale continuum of care retirement living campuses, backed by virtual health and private hospital style services.
Regional and rural communities face an additional challenge thanks to the lack of accommodation options for older residents – SCCBH has a small 40-unit retirement village while there is just one 40-unit rental village in the town.
But without alternatives, many older Australians face moving far away from their local communities and networks as they age – is this really the future that we as a country want?
