
The growing waitlist for home care packages risks thousands of hospital beds being taken up by elderly people experiencing otherwise avoidable complications or falls without adequate support, providers have warned. Source: The Australian.
Despite concerns from sector heads that the waitlist from December – about 83,000 – was likely to blow out to 100,000 by the middle of 2025, data released this week by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare showed a lower-than-expected increase of about 5000 more people on the waitlist in the three months to March.
But peak bodies said the fresh figures only captured the state of the waitlist from four months ago, urging the provision of more current data and reiterating warnings that the waitlist was still on track to reach 100,000 by the end of the year.
Australian Unity, a member of the Government’s Aged Care Transition Taskforce, warned a waitlist of that size could result in the taking up of 600,000 avoidable hospital bed days per year from falls and other complications that home support could prevent.
Australian Unity and several other members of the Aged Care Transition Taskforce have demanded Labor urgently release 20,000 packages, rather than waiting to do so until November, when its new support-at-home system goes live.
Labor has promised to roll out more than 80,000 extra home care packages in the first 12 months of the support-at-home program, which will see the development of classifications of home offering up to $78,000 worth of support a year.
The AIHW figures, released late on Monday, showed nearly 300,000 were accessing home care packages, with 35,613 packages released over the March quarter compared to 33,474 in the three months to December 2024.
A spokeswoman for Anne Ruston, who heads up the aged care and health portfolio for the Coalition, said the Coalition “calls on the Albanese Government to commence the promised rollout of new packages immediately and address the skyrocketing wait list as a matter of urgent priority”.
FULL STORY
AIHW data reveals growing home care waitlist as hospital risks increase (The Australian)