Noosaville aged care places welcome, but aged care sector needs certainty
16th January, 2012
Federal Member for Wide Bay, Warren Truss, today welcomed the allocation of 140 additional residential aged care places for a new aged care facility at Noosa Ridge, Noosaville.“Noosa Ridge, to be built on a site in Lenehans Lane, will be operated by the McKenzie Aged Care Group from Victoria. The places are valued at $6.43 million per annum,” Mr Truss said.
Forty of the places will offer additional hotel style services including higher standards of accommodation and food at extra cost.
“While the new places for the Sunshine Coast are welcome, there is great uncertainty across the aged care sector about its future viability. Many aged care providers have found that the Government subsidies offered to them are not sufficient to meet the costs involved with delivering those places. Over recent years, thousands of allocated places have not been built.
“Aged care providers are losing confidence that the places they supply will be commercially viable, so in some places it seems that they have stopped applying for them,” Mr Truss said.
“The Government has been sitting on a Productivity Commission report since August, which made 58 recommendations on ways to improve the aged care sector, but the report has been greeted with silence from the Gillard Labor Government.
“The Government must release its response to the report and detail its plan and initiatives to ensure the aged care sector is viable and that future needs can be met.”
There were 10,493 residential aged care beds available nationwide this year but in spite of an ageing population, the Government only received applications for 7,933.
“Until the Government matches the places it offers with sustainable levels of funding, aged care providers will be reluctant to apply for them or take them up,” Mr Truss said.
Mr Truss warned that uncertainty in the aged care sector will reach crisis point unless it is addressed as a matter of urgency.
“There is a lag between the time that the places area offered, when they are applied for, when they are approved, and when they are constructed or put in place. Unless the sector’s concerns are addressed right now, the problems will be felt for years to come,” Mr Truss said.
The Gillard Labor Government also failed to allocate any community care packages to Queensland in the 2011 Aged Care round.
“People like to stay in the comfort and security of their own home for as long as possible. There were more than 24,000 applications made for community care (in home packages) this year but only 1,698 were offered. It is incredible that no new community care packages were offered anywhere in Queensland,” Mr Truss said.
“The elderly deserve to have access to the care they need. Families and carers do as much as they can to help the elderly and frail to stay in their homes for as long as possible, but it is not fair to expect them to act as substitutes for full residential care,” Mr Truss said.
