Ryman Healthcare wants reform in Australia to get more hospitals in villages

Cameron Holland, the Melbourne-based boss of Ryman in Australia. Photo / Supplied

New Zealand's biggest listed retirement owner/operator wants Australian state and federal laws to be combined and aged-care funding overhauled so more hospital-level care can be provided across the Tasman within villages.

Cameron Holland, Ryman Healthcare Australia's chief executive, said: "Learn from the Kiwis."

The company has released a new paper, 'A solution for Australia's aged care system - continuum of care'.

New Zealand's retirement village and aged-care 'model' was admired in Australia as a solution to long-term problems of not catering enough for the rapidly ageing population.

But this country also has issues, with the Herald reporting elderly Kiwis are languishing in hospitals or at home with family unable to properly care for them because rest homes struggling with nursing shortages have stopped admissions.

Ryman Healthcare has so far only developed in Victoria, where it says "efforts have been made to create a planning environment which encourages the development of aged care facilities in residential areas".

Holland said: "Ryman's pioneering model creating care on the one location is a model which should be explored and encouraged in Australia, not just for this company but for all, because we view it as a great way to solve the problems of caring for people as they age."

The company wants a change in Australia because it says elderly people there are being disadvantaged by the lack of retirement villages generally, but more specifically, the lack of hospitals within those villages.

Ryman's site at Mt Eliza, where it wants to build on the beachfront. Photo / Supplied

In the discussion document, it says its most sought-after and unique products are one-bedroom serviced apartments. But these don't qualify for residential aged care funding under Australian laws. Ryman wants that changed.

"This limits the assistance available to residents who may benefit from or prefer this option," the company says.

Asked if Ryman was trying to make more money by pushing its Kiwi model onto Australians, Holland said: "That's not the purpose of this paper at all. It was to highlight the benefits of the model that is standard in New Zealand and was pioneered by Ryman which brings more care options in villages. When Australians age in retirement villages and need more care, they have to leave their place and go into a hospital. It's a very traumatic experience and very, very poor for residents.

"Australians are trying to figure out how they can bring in hospital-level care for their residents, and it's very, very difficult if they haven't already built it in their villages. We build hospitals in every village we develop in Victoria. We're the only operator who does it in Australia on every single site," Holland said.

Melbourne: where Ryman has built many new villages. Photo / Getty Images

Ryman has seven villages in Victoria and another seven under development. It caters for about 1500 residents there, but in about three years' time, it will house more than 4000 Victorians.

The value of Ryman's assets in Australia will be around $3 billion by 2025, when it will have 14 villages, all in Victoria.

Asked how the funding model had been made to work in Victoria if it didn't work elsewhere in Australia, Holland said: "Legislation should be harmonised to encourage other owner/operators to build hospitals in their villages. It's got nothing to do with our profit. We could stay silent on this, but it's better to speak out about a better model in Australia overall."

Generally, Ryman says Australia could do far more to help older people move to retirement villages like those it owns and operates. It complains that state and federal laws are barriers and create complexity it would prefer to have axed.

Holland said elderly Australians were not as well catered for because most retirement villages there don't have hospitals. That is the opposite to New Zealand - almost all new villages built in the last 10 years have hospitals, he said.

Ryman says in the whitepaper: "In Australia, retirement living legislation and aged care legislation are not synchronised and reside in different jurisdictions - state and federal, respectively. This can create significant complexity for operators, who must commit additional expense to effectively navigate the various retirement living regulatory regimes in each state."

"Ryman recommends that, where identified, obstacles created by the regulatory division between retirement living and aged care are remedied. This could be through the harmonisation of legislation in a national regulatory regime or some other form of synchronisation between them as they currently exist. If removing regulatory obstacles and complexity assists in the further adoption of the continuum of care model, this could only serve to improve Australia's aged care system," the company said.

Asked when Ryman would expand out of Victoria, Holland said: "We still have plenty of growth ahead of us here. The population of this state is the same as New Zealand."

Asked why Ryman hadn't built in Sydney, Holland said: "It's a very different market, very land constrained; trying to find large sites in central Sydney would be difficult. Melbourne is less developed. Sydney is a much more densely developed city."

It was not funding models which were a barrier to Ryman going into New South Wales, he said. The company had more than enough to do in Victoria.