The Aged Care Association is warning older people will have to pay extra charges for hundreds more beds if Health NZ doesn't spend more.
The Aged Care Association is warning older people will have to pay extra charges for hundreds more beds if Health NZ doesn't spend more.
The Aged Care Association is warning more than 340 aged care beds will require premium charges of up to $115 per day if Health New Zealand doesn’t increase the sector’s annual funding percentage uplift currently being negotiated.
Health NZ (Te Whatu Ora) is offering a 3.2% increase to the roughly $1.4-1.5 billion spent on aged care annually and appears unlikely to improve its offer with ageing well director Andy Inder telling the Herald, “We don’t have room to move”.
Association chief executive Tracey Martin, who believes an 11% uplift is needed, says Health NZ’s offer is not sustainable and will mean 343 beds that don’t include extra charges on occupants will have premium charges applied to them, forcing more older people to inappropriately live at home.
Martin is also critical of what she believes to be Health NZ’s dictatorial attitude to negotiations and will be meeting with Seniors Minister Casey Costello on Monday in the hope she’ll intervene.
In a statement, Costello said she’d been clear with Health NZ that, “We do not want to lose bed capacity in the short term or put vulnerable providers under unnecessary pressure”.
Seniors Minister Casey Costello is being asked to intervene. Photo / Mark Mitchell
However, Inder didn’t express concern at the estimated number of beds that would attract a charge as a result of Health NZ’s offer, saying more elderly were paying extra charges for beds and believed it was “probably unlikely” ministerial intervention would change things.
It comes amid warnings of how a growing elderly population will impact the provision of healthcare and aged care, particularly in a constrained fiscal environment when Kiwis of all ages struggled with the high cost of living.
Martin told the Herald Health NZ’s board offered the 3.2% uplift towards the end of June. Since then, the association had written twice to the board, expressing support for its desired 11% increase but also modelling increases of 4 and 6%.
“We know that [11%] is a big push in these times. We want to negotiate but at the moment, the reason why I need to go and see the minister is Te Whatu Ora is not negotiating, they are just dictating.”
A recent survey of association members found aged care providers would have to add a premium charge to about 343 standard beds, which were normally paid by a combination of Government funding and the occupant’s superannuation.
Those extra charges ranged from $20 per day to $115 extra per day, according to Martin.
“New Zealanders who don’t have money, who can’t pay anything extra, these are the residential care beds that they need,” she said.
“It just means that there are more and more of our seniors that are inappropriately living at home because they need to be in a care facility, then they fall and then they take up a hospital bed and there’s no residential care bed for them to move into.”
Aged Care Association chief executive Tracey Martin thinks Health NZ needs to spend more. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Martin said she was “always hopeful” Costello would intervene.
“I don’t think anybody is deliberately trying to screw aged care here, I just need to make sure that they understand the consequence.”
Speaking to the Herald, Inder said he wanted to finalise negotiations “as quickly as possible” and as such, it was unlikely the current offer would be improved.
“I think it’s really late in the piece for us to make any material change without having time to consider the impact of those changes.”
Asked if he was concerned about how many more beds would require an extra charge, Inder said it needed to be considered alongside a growing trend of people opting for beds with premium charges attached.
According to Inder, about 30% of aged care beds had an extra charge in 2010. That had risen to about 41%.
However, Inder couldn’t cite any studies done by Health NZ that explained that trend, when asked if that was due to a shortage of standard beds across the sector. He suspected some people would opt for premium beds because they offered benefits.
He acknowledged there were capacity issues in different parts of the country, which needed addressing.
“In Canterbury, we have over 270 beds per 1000 people over the age of 85, but in places like Northland, we only have 141 so I do think we need to think about how we get the right capacity in the right areas.”
Adam Pearse is a political reporter in the NZ Herald Press Gallery team, based at Parliament. He has worked for NZME since 2018, covering sport and health for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei before moving to the NZ Herald in Auckland, covering Covid-19 and crime.
