Kerryn Williams
Last August, the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) reported that older people, in particular those on low incomes, are receiving poor health care.
Almost 20% of people requiring a place in a high-care facility wait more than three months and around 34% of those requiring low-care facilities wait three months.
As a result of the lack of vacancies in aged-care facilities and nursing homes, there are more than 1200 elderly patients occupying beds in overrun public hospitals. Nursing home residents also have very limited access to dental care although they often suffer from oral health problems.
ACOSS also reported a trend towards "turnstile GP visits", where elderly patients are rushed in and out of a consultation with their doctor, increasing the potential for serious illnesses to be misdiagnosed or not recognised.
Cuts to the Medicare rebate have put pressure on doctors to limit costs by reducing consultation times for low-income, bulk-billed patients, contributing to this problem.
A study of elderly patients who were admitted to the emergency department at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney over a one-year period found that 79% of admissions could have been avoided if the patients had been treated by a GP at an earlier date.
The decline of bulk-billing has meant increasing numbers of older people cannot afford to visit a GP and so end up in hospital emergency departments once their condition worsens.
Other problems identified by ACOSS included lack of interim care for patients waiting to access aged-care facilities, lack of rehabilitation accommodation for elderly patients and lack of home-based assistance for patients after they have received hospital treatment.
Lack of funding is also creating an exodus of nursing staff from aged care. On December 17, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare released figures indicating 9% of nurses in aged care had ceased working in the area between 1999 and 2001.
According to the Australian Nurses Federation, this can largely be explained by the fact that aged-care nurses are paid between 12.5% and 22% less than nurses working in public hospitals.
From Green Left Weekly, January 28, 2004.
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