Australian Medical Association says aged care residents the victims of 'inertia' by the government

Jun 23 2008

According to the Australian Medical Association, the Federal Government is guilty of "policy inertia" when it comes to addressing the needs of aged care residents.

Australia's top doctors' group says aged care facilities need more registered nurses and doctors are frustrated by the barriers which prevent them providing prompt medical care to elderly people in nursing homes.

AMA president Dr. Rosanna Capolingua says the Government needs to invest in IT infrastructure in aged care facilities to ensure there is a reliable system of patient records and says improvements are needed in Medicare rebates for patients when they do access doctors.

Dr. Capolingua warns that GP services to residents in aged care homes are under growing pressure and little has been done by past governments to establish policies that ensure effective medical care is available to frail and sick residents in a timely and suitable manner.

As part of General Practice Week, the AMA is calling for action to be taken to actively involve medical care in the daily operations of aged care homes.

The AMA wants to see aged care policies that introduce dedicated Medicare payments to improve access to GPs and medical specialists for older Australians.

They also want more GPs to be able to use general practice nurses to assist in the delivery of care in residential and community settings along with funding for community and residential aged care which meets the real costs of care.

Also called for are strategies that lead to wage parity between the acute and aged care sectors to encourage skilled nurses back into the sector with the capacity to deliver quality aged care services.

The AMA says by introducing computer systems, clinical management and the delivery of care will be improved, as well as medical record keeping and prescribing which connects the GP to the residential aged care facility and the pharmacy.

Experts say over the next 30 years, the number of people aged over 65 years is expected to increase to 2.7 million and by 2038, the number of very old people (aged 85 years and over) is projected to almost quadruple to 1.1 million.

Data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) indicates that the number of residents with high-care needs in residential aged care facilities increased from 58% in 1998 to 69% in 2006.

The Department of Health and Ageing's 2004 aged care homes survey found that 52 per cent of residential aged care facilities (RACFs) sometimes had difficulty obtaining GP services for existing residents, and 56 per cent sometimes had difficulty obtaining GP input for routine services such as writing and reviewing medication charts and prescriptions and said the current structure of Medicare discourages visits to RACFs by GPs.