Federal takeover of aged care urged by reform commission
February 16, 2009
THE Health and Hospitals Reform Commission is expected to propose that the Federal Government's control of health services should be extended to include aged care.
Nursing homes and community services for the elderly are already financed, but not entirely controlled, by the Commonwealth and are plagued by duplication and poor co-ordination between the two levels of government.
The commission is expected to call for the Government to assume overall control of the aged care assessment team process, which now decides what level of care elderly patients are eligible for in the heavily subsidised aged care system.
State and territory government agencies have a say in the assessment process that decides whether patients should have high or low nursing home care or receive home and community care arrangements. But once in nursing homes, patients are subjected to further assessment that can be at odds with the earlier assessment.
The lack of co-ordination has been cited as a cause of federal-state cost-shifting, with elderly patients being kept in expensive general hospital beds when they should be transferred to nursing homes.
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