“We can all do better”: Opportunity is on aged care’s horizon

Ageing Australia’s conference season is well underway, with the peak body for aged care providers descending on Adelaide on May 9.

A record-crowd of 230 delegates attended the SA State Conference, bringing together some of the nation’s most passionate leaders. 

With a captivating line-up of speakers taking to the stage throughout the day, Hello Leaders has some of the early highlights. Stay tuned for more insights next week.

Striving to do better

South Australia’s Minister for Human Services, Seniors and Ageing Well, Nat Cook, opened the day with a passionate presentation urging all providers and industry stakeholders to do better.

“We want to make ageing a process of dignity, beauty and comfort. We have to find that individual spot that triggers or evokes a memory and makes the connection [between people],” she shared. 

Ms Cook, a member of the SA Labor Party, also stressed the benefits of a re-elected Federal Labor Government. She said the stability offers an opportunity for the government to deliver on the promises it has made and the goals it hopes to achieve. 

She recognises there are still plenty of challenges for providers, acknowledging entrenched behaviours, processes and ideology as recurring barriers for progress. 

She highlighted workforce as the top challenge, before emphasising that all levels of government across multiple portfolios are working together to improve education pathways. 

This, she added, is particularly important for regional and remote providers. 

“Regional providers have different challenges and bigger challenges than what people working in the metropolitan area have. Then turn your mind to remote providers. Imagine hundreds of kilometers between towns that are only accessible by dirt roads where camels are lying on them and there is literally abject poverty, other service provision is almost completely absent or impossible to provide,” Ms Cook said.

“We have got such a significant number of barriers that exponentially increase when we are talking about delivering to the Aboriginal people in our community.”

Ms Cook said the sector must do better for all care recipients through individualised care, person-centred practice and evidence-based practice. This, she reinforced, comes down to meeting the challenges of providing a skilled and committed workforce, developing relationships and building inclusive communities. 

“We can all do better to work together and build a more inclusive community,” she added. 

Preparing for a new aged care cohort

While exploring the financial changes for aged care providers, Grant Corderoy, Senior Partner, StewartBrown, touched on the demographic shift that’s going to significantly reshape aged care over the next decade.

“For the first time in Australia’s history, we have a different cohort of people entering aged care. Today, everyone in aged care… We’ll call them the frugal generation. We know these are people who are very conscious of where they spend their money,” he said.

“Now we have the baby boomers coming through. What do baby boomers do? We spend, we go overseas for holidays, we travel around Australia, we change our vehicles more regularly, we go to restaurants more regularly. 

“How is aged care going to suddenly handle this whole new cohort? In five years’ time, 30% of people needing aged care will be a baby boomer. In ten years’ time, nearly 100% will be a baby boomer.”

Looking to the future, Mr Corderoy detailed the key areas that he believes will help improve provider financial performance, honing in on investability and leadership. 

“We have to have enough surplus so that the sector’s investable and maintains it. We talk about not for profit, but not for profit means no profit. Not for profit means the surpluses we get, we invest back into the delivery of care. For for-profit, it’s important that we have a sector that has balance and diversity so there is investability,” he added.

“Leadership isn’t just the board. Leadership isn’t just the CEO or the CFO or the care manager. We have to embrace leadership at all levels. Everyone has to be part of this. If we don’t meet these needs [of older people], we’ll have the worst outcomes. But we want to have, which we have in many ways, a world-class aged care system.”

Another focal point for Mr Corderoy was the holy trinity of viability, sustainability and investability. He said all three are essential for aged care providers to ensure there is sustained financial success and an ability to meet future demand.

“In residential aged care, we had five years of average operating losses. We’re coming off a fairly bad run. Viability is the ability of an organisation to maintain its operations and generate surpluses,” he said. 

“Sustainability is operating a business in a manner without negatively impacting the environment, the community or society: it is really about economic sustainability alongside environmental sustainability and social sustainability. 

“Investability means the operation is financially attractive, it can continue to grow, and is attractive for new people to come into the sector. Viability is maintaining [performance], and investability is what we need to meet future demand.”