Ageing Australia CEO Tom Symondson highlighted the urgent need to improve access to care for older Australians, during today’s public hearing of the Senate Inquiry into Support at Home.
Speaking after his Senate appearance, Mr Symondson outlined the challenges older people still face in accessing critical supports.
“While we have seen some welcome improvement in waiting times, we’re still a long way off the Royal Commission’s recommendation that nobody should wait more than a month to receive care. Currently, the median wait time is around 10 months which is clearly far too long. What’s more, we still regularly hear cases of people waiting much longer than that, even for very high levels of care,” Mr Symondson said.
“With over 100,000 people waiting for a package, another 100,000 waiting just to be assessed and more than 53,000 receiving only 60% of the value of the approved package when they finally do get it, I do not think we can safely say yet, that people are getting access to care when, and where, they need it.”
“We do regularly hear of people having a lower level of package than their needs would dictate. Some of that is because they have waited a long time and their needs have increased in the interim. If they’ve waited 10 months since assessment to receive care, that package is likely no longer enough to support them. But too often it is because the assessment process has overestimated their ability or the ability of their family to provide unpaid care to supplement a package.”
Mr Symondson also raised concerns about the lack of financial viability of providers since the reforms.
“For the first time in the history of homecare, providers now lose money on every package, which makes it incredibly difficult to expand services. We believe this is being caused by the combination of increased complexity of delivering Support at Home, the huge unfunded cost to providers of implementing the reforms, and the collapse in package utilisation rates from as high as 88% prior to 1 November to only 62% at the end of March this year.”
He also called for improvements in the provision of assistive technologies, quoting examples of extended wait times as well as onerous compliance requirements blowing out the cost of seemingly simple purchases.
“An $1,800 process to assess whether someone needs a $100 mobility aid is clearly not what anybody intended. Providers want to be able to provide the aids that older people are crying out for, but we cannot currently do that as we would wish.”
Ageing Australia members Uniting NSW.ACT, Hall and Prior and Pearl Home Care also gave evidence at hearings, alongside Uniting Care Australia, Council on the Ageing (COTA) and The Older Persons Advocacy Network (OPAN).
