Estimates - Archer - Ageing
CHAIR - Minister, I want to talk about transition care packages. I'm really interested to know how you're approaching using these in the most effective way? In April, the dashboard suggests there are 100 patients awaiting aged care or NDIS beds, so we're looking at the aged care beds. It's often a blame game with the federal government, you know, 'They haven't funded this', but that doesn't solve the issue for those poor people, often older people, languishing in hospital who don't want to hear about the blame game, they want solutions.
What's your department looking at in terms of options for changing focus and using the transition care packages funding in a more effective way given the increase in long-stay patients in Tasmanian hospitals?
Mrs ARCHER - Thank you. I don't think it is about a blame game so much as recognising that there defined areas of responsibility and there is funding attached to those. This is a really poor outcome, as we've identified earlier for those patients in particular, for their well-being.
Their conditions deteriorate the longer that they stay in hospital, and they are generally, I think it's reasonable to say, at a more complex end of presentation. I think it is important to note that there is a level of complexity to these patients. Not only are they awaiting beds in residential aged care where there is perhaps a lack of bed, but there are also gaps in terms of that level of complexity. That is also the type of issue that we need to work through. It is not just as simple as providing more aged care beds.
CHAIR - I'm not suggesting that. It's about getting the most out of the TCPs.
Mr WEBSTER - As to the TCP or transitional care program - which is why I was careful earlier to talk about interim care rather than transitional care, because the TCP is a funded program jointly funded by both the state and Commonwealth. In 2024-25, the $16.2 million was spent on transitional care packages in Tasmania. We have 134 available under our arrangement with the Commonwealth.
These patients are not necessarily ready for residential aged care or going home at the point they enter this program. It is a higher level of care that sits between hospital and home/aged care facility. It's important to say that as to the data we give on the older patients that are stranded in our hospitals, they are cleared to go to an aged care facility, they're medically cleared.
Whereas TCPs are not medically cleared; they require transitional support, a number of allied health supports, occupational therapy, social work, nursing support and things as well as personal care. The TCP is designed for a particular purpose and it's not the same purpose as an interim care arrangement. As I said, the Commonwealth pay theoretically 75 per cent of the program and the state contributes 25 per cent, but of the $16 million last financial year, the state contributed $5.7 million.
We actually already top up the transitional care packages to make sure this category of patients' needs are met as closely as possible, but it's not an alternative to interim care or an alternative to an aged care place for a cleared patient. As the minister said, then there's the level of the patient. They might be medically cleared and okay, but require a high-care dementia bed, and there's not one available in their local area, or indeed the aged care facility they want to go to doesn't offer that.
Equally, aged care facilities have to make a profit, or if they're not-for-profit, break even, so they want to get a mix of the type of patient they get, from those that are on the affordable packages through to those that are actually making bonds and things like that. All of those actually complicate the stranded patients and how we get them to aged care because that's not just an homogeneous group.
CHAIR - Okay. Thank you