As recently as last year, the sector was short over 1,200 aged care nurses. It also had a nurse vacancy rate of 20% and an annual turnover of 50%. When aged care facilities don’t have enough nurses, they’re left with two options. The first is for existing nurses to cover the extra hours. No one wants staff who are overworked, therefore the second option is often taken: closing beds.

Over the next decade or so, we’ll have 84,000 more Kiwis aged 80+. The number of beds needed to meet that demand is around 54,000. Right now, we have 40,800. To grow by 13,200 in that time, we’ll need around 1,400 extra beds per year – which corresponds to 10 facilities. Under the current funding model, this simply will not happen. In fact, as of today, the supply of beds is declining, falling by 146 beds last year alone.

With so many aged care facilities closing down, many of our seniors will be forced into public hospitals. This makes no long-term financial sense. Studies show it costs the Government around $1,700 per day to care for someone in a hospital ward, while a break-even cost of a bed in aged care is just $372. At just 21.8% of the hospital rate, this represents a significant saving for the health sector and country as a whole.

When people hear the term aged care, many think of retirement villages. This inevitably leads to questions around why we need extra government funding. But it’s important to understand that while some of these villages do offer aged care and experience underfunding, they’re able to lean on profits from their villages to fund their Aged Care services. Unlike the 60% of facilities run by charities, trusts or private owners.