Aged Care: Challenges Posed by Increasing Demand and Growing Diversity

The Australian community places significant importance on older people having access to high quality and cost effective aged care services. This is reflected in current institutional and regulatory arrangements, which give considerable weight to achieving equity of access and a minimum acceptable standard of service quality.

The Commission research paper, Trends in Aged Care Services: some implications builds on earlier work by the Commission in the areas of demographic change, health and aged care. The study analyses major trends in both demand for aged care services and the supply of these services. It also explores the implications for the future structure and mix of aged care services, the aged care workforce, and the capacity of the sector to lift its productivity growth.

It notes that the ageing of Australia's population will call for the provision of aged care services to much larger numbers of people over the next few decades. Further, these services will need to meet the challenges posed by the increasing diversity of older people in terms of their care needs, preferences and affluence.

Commissioner Mike Woods observed that 'these emerging challenges on the demand-side of the aged care market are creating pressure for the supply-side to be more flexible, responsive and efficient'.