How retirement village residents could get better quality care
By Rachel Lane
Did you know where you call home can affect what you can spend your home care package funds on? It’s not fair, and it’s not efficient, but a new report commissioned by the Retirement Living Council, Shared Care, could help iron out some of the unreasonableness in the current system.
Residents of retirement villages pay a weekly or monthly service charge that often includes things like home modifications, maintenance such as gardening and transport to medical and social appointments.
A new report has suggested ways retirement village residents could get better care and more efficient funding.Credit: istock
If they lived in a suburban home, their home care package – a government-subsidised program that provides support for older people who want to keep living at home – could be used to contribute towards these costs. But retirement village residents are finding that they can’t always access funding, or if they can, they can’t always choose how it is spent.
Stories include residents who need help with meal preparation, unable to get fresh meals from their village, and their home care provider arranging frozen meal deliveries instead. In at least one case, the meals were prepared by the village, frozen, and supplied to the home care provider, who then delivered them back to the resident days later.
To top it off, residents are told that they are not allowed to eat the meals in the communal dining room, they must be consumed in their apartment. The lack of choice is unfair, but the inefficiencies, added costs and delays that are caused are ludicrous.
The Shared Care report says that while retirement villages have historically been a lifestyle offering for younger retirees, the average age of new residents is 75, many of whom want to access care.
The concentration of people wanting care in the one location makes it an attractive proposition from a resident and government point of view, minimising inefficiencies of lost care and wages through travel, can mean people receive more care for less spend.
The report proposes a three-level service model: villages would receive bulk funding for basic services such as home modifications, maintenance, and transport. Beyond basic services, villages could deliver (or partner with a provider) intermediate or comprehensive care based on each resident’s needs.
Importantly, residents would still have the choice of using the village (or partner) or their own provider. The savings based on travel time, resourcing efficiency, and reduced administration costs are estimated to be $63.8 million per year.
The Shared Care model makes sense; retirement villages, by their nature, provide better economies of scale than homes spread out in the suburbs. If we use gardening as an example, currently, many village residents are responsible for maintaining their personal gardens.
If there are 70 residents in the village, that is potentially 70 different gardening contracts. While it is unlikely to be that many, as most people would choose a local provider, which narrows the number, you could still have 20 different gardeners.
If we look at it from a care point of view, very few people can afford to have a nurse on standby 24/7, but in a village with hundreds of residents, it can be affordable. Not only that, but it means they have someone who knows them, who is monitoring their needs, and who can potentially prevent health crises.
At a time when we are facing a housing crisis and an aged care crisis, we need to be giving serious consideration to such ideas.
Rachel Lane is the author of the bestselling book Aged Care, Who Cares? and Downsizing Made Simple with fellow finance expert Noel Whittaker. The new edition of Downsizing Made Simple is now available online.
Expert tips on how to save, invest and make the most of your money delivered to your inbox every Sunday. Sign up for our Real Money newsletter.