Peak renews calls for needs-based allied health
In the lead up to the federal election, the peak body for allied health professionals has raised concerns over the lack of system attention to reablement and no mandatory benchmarks despite the royal commission’s recognition the practice was crucial to older people’s wellbeing.
Despite multiple reforms across the aged care sector due to take effect in July, there is still no guaranteed needs-based provision of allied health, said peak body Allied Health Professions Australia.
With the federal election just over a fortnight away the peak for Australia’s allied health professionals has three key priorities it wants addressed:
- fund the implementation of an assessment and care planning tool for all aged care providers to ensure a nationally consistent approach to aged care service delivery
- require that aged care providers use residential aged care funding for direct care service delivery only and spending by providers is publicly reported
- adequately cost and fund allied health time to prescribe and implement assistive technology and home modifications.
AHPA has also raised concerns about the exclusion of allied health professions such as osteopathy, orthotics and prosthetics and orthoptics on the clinical service lists or omitted completely from Support at Home program services.
The Support at Home manual emphasises a focus on reablement but AHPA policy and advocacy senior advisor Dr Chris Atmore told Australian Ageing Agenda the policy settings aren’t doing enough to embed allied health and that it lacks practical details of how allied health and reablement can be achieved and monitored.
Allied health services minimise unnecessary hospitalisations and allow people to independently age at home for longer, said Dr Atmore. She reiterated how the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety also identified reablement as critical to older people’s physical and mental health and wellbeing.
“Royal commission recommendations therefore included that aged care provided to people at home and in residential facilities include a level of allied health care appropriate to each person’s needs,” Dr Atmore told Australian Ageing Agenda.
“In this way the royal commission called for embedding the concept of needs-based care, including allied health care, in the aged care system.”
Dr Atmore also noted that the Inspector-General of Aged Care recently called for the Commonwealth Government to more broadly implement the needs-based approach that the royal commission envisaged.
“There is still a lack of system attention to the concept of reablement and the role of allied health. There are also no mandatory benchmarks or ringfenced funding for allied health, so there is no real incentive for providers to prioritise it, unlike care minutes for nursing and personal care – and we know that some direct care finding is used for other things outside care like accommodation cost,” she told AAA.
“There is also no nationally consistent process for home care providers or residential aged care homes to assess people’s allied health needs, and even if they are assessed properly, no effective regulation to ensure that people actually get the allied health care they need.”
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