Aged care crisis in Tassie wards

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Aged care crisis in Tassie wards

By Michelle Paine

The Mercury, August 28 2003

EVERY day in Tasmania 117 elderly people who need to be in a nursing home are waiting in a hospital bed.

Health and Human Services Minister David Llewellyn said a new study showed Tasmania was spending more than $16 million a year caring for people who should not be living in hospital.

Mr Llewellyn said the ageing of the population meant the problem would worsen rapidly, with expectations Tasmania would plumb crisis depths ahead of other states.

"The shortage of federally funded places is a pressing problem with serious consequences to our state public health system," he said.

"For 12 months I have been highlighting the shortage of beds in our public hospitals being exacerbated by the problem of patients awaiting transfer to residential aged care."

As well as the distress to frail elderly people and their families, each bed could potentially be used to help ease the long elective surgery waiting lists.

The average wait for a nursing home place was six months in a study done two years ago, with many waiting more than a year.

State governments are hoping to pressure the Federal Government over the health care crisis at the Council of Australian Governments meeting in Canberra tomorrow.

Mr Llewellyn said an average 83 patients were stuck in the Royal Hobart Hospital, Launceston General Hospital and North-West Regional Hospital each day, costing $257,000 weekly.

"Our rural hospitals are also affected, with an average 15 patients awaiting transfer to residential care each week at a cost of around $37,000," he said.

"An average 11 patients receive rehabilitation at the Royal Hobart Hospital Karigal service each week, costing the state about $13,000 a week.

"The whole question of residential aged care is one of the biggest challenges facing Australia and for Tasmania the need to meet this challenge will come much sooner than elsewhere, even decades before some of the bigger states."

Last year the situation got so bad the State Government moved 30 elderly patients to a new unit at New Town in a two-year pilot project funded by both state and federal governments.

In June last year there were the equivalent of two full acute-care wards with elderly people waiting for beds.

Meanwhile, the ACT has broken ranks with the Labor states by signing the Federal Government's public hospital funding agreement.

ACT Health Minister Simon Corbell snapped the deadlock when he secured $553 million over the next five years for Canberra hospitals.

Federal Health Minister Kay Patterson said the agreement boosted hospital funding in the territory by $146 million above the money provided under the last agreement.

The Federal Government has offered $42 billion to the states under the agreement, a $10 billion boost on the previous deal.

But the states say they need at least 27 per cent more to maintain existing services, and have called for health funding to be discussed at tomorrow's meeting between the premiers and prime minister.