Aged-Care Regulations

The Hon. G.G. BROCK (Stuart) (14:48): My question again is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Can the minister update my communities with regard to the new aged-care regulations that are proposed to be introduced by the federal government on 1 November this year? With your leave and that of the house, I will explain further, sir.

Leave granted.

The Hon. G.G. BROCK: It has been reported that the federal government will be bringing in more regulations relating to aged-care facilities. The state government has some aged-care operations, including Hammill House, attached to our hospitals. We are having a bit of trouble at the current moment filling some of the positions in Hammill House. Will this affect our facilities in our hospitals?

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:49): I thank the member for Stuart for his question and again for his advocacy in relation to his local health and aged-care services. He absolutely is a member of this parliament who cares. As he has outlined, the federal government has implemented some very significant changes to aged-care regulations, which are coming in from 1 November. Of course, that's a delay from the original implementation date of 1 July when they were expected to be coming in. These create new fee structures, increased quality standards, new provider regulation standards—a whole range of different changes that are happening to the aged-care regulation. I think the vast majority of those are welcome and will be an improvement in terms of aged-care regulation in this country but I think it is fair to say that there are certainly risks as well.

We are in very regular dialogue with aged-care providers here in South Australia about some of those risks. We originally were particularly concerned in terms of what some of the financial and prudential standards were going to mean in terms of aged care in this state, and across the country whether that would be an inhibiting factor as part of driving down a lack of capacity, which is obviously one of the key areas of pressure on our healthcare system, is that lack of capacity in aged care.

The federal government has listened to that They have addressed that and I think that that issue is largely resolved now. That was part of the 10-point plan that we put forward to the commonwealth government some months ago to try to address some of the blockages that we are seeing here in South Australia.

The member will be aware that not only here in South Australia have we got some roughly 290 people stuck in our hospital system waiting for aged care, but across the country that figure is about 2,500 people stuck in hospitals waiting for aged care. So we were putting forward a whole range of positive proposals to try to address that, to try to encourage people to open up additional capacity and to take people from hospital into aged care.

What the federal government has cited as the key element of where this will seek to drive improvements is that financial improvements will be in place for providers to open additional capacity, particularly where people have the capacity to pay. We see some interest from aged-care providers in now starting to build additional capacity where we know that that's needed. The federal government's own figures point to the fact that, just on the population ageing alone, we need across the country 10,000 extra aged-care beds every year just to keep up with demand. Nowhere near that number are being built across the country, so that is a significant concern.

So anything that can be done to encourage providers to build is obviously welcome. However, one thing that I am particularly concerned about and met with one of our big providers here in South Australia last week about is what this will mean for concessional payments because this is now going to set up a discrepancy between those who have the ability to pay more and those people who will be relying on those concessional places which are not going to be as financially rewarded.

Of course, there are a lot of areas of our state, including regional areas of course, where there are a lot of people who don't have the capacity to pay. We can't be in a situation where we see that pressure lead to more pressure on hospitals and more pressure on families, etc., as well. So this is another issue that we're raising with the federal government. We need to address that concessional patient issue. If that becomes a problem then these reforms, even though they're meant to be taking us forward, potentially could set us back as well.

Just in the last few seconds, the other big thing, of course, is additional home-care packages, which are very welcome.