Low-need elders turned away

The new Aged Care Funding Instrument (ACFI) is forcing low care facilities to turn away prospective residents with low needs because it is not viable to support them in residential care, according to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald.

The report said that in some cases, older people are being turned away from hostels even when there are vacancies.

“People who normally would have come into low-residential care [hostels] are being rejected by organisations from a financial position; they don’t bring in enough government recurrent funds,” the CEO of Aged and Community Services Association of NSW and ACT, Jill Pretty told the newspaper.

Aged and Community Services Australia CEO, Greg Mundy confirmed that this trend is widespread across the country.

“We are getting a pretty consistent message from all our networks that there is an issue around the lower-needs end of the spectrum. There are some people whose level of funding under the ACFI is so low that is very hard to take them in,” he said.

Mr Mundy said that at this stage, it was mainly people who would have been classified as Category 6 or Category 7 under the old funding regime that are being refused admission to hostel care.

“I’m not saying that all those people need or should be in residential aged care but they need to be somewhere,” Mr Mundy said.

“They might be able to use some of the higher level community care programs but it may be that some of them have housing or shelter needs.”

Mr Mundy said that any evaluation of the ACFI must include an analysis of those older people it leaves “exposed”.

“There are number of options that could be explored, including putting more money into the lower end of the residential spectrum to or developing other community-based solutions,” he said. “But doing nothing is not an option.”