The average direct care hours worked per resident per day is 3.81, according to results from the latest StewartBrown Aged Care Financial Performance Survey in June.
That’s up from 3.76 hours in 2015.
These facilities have an average of 73 residents – so that’s over 278 hours of care delivered every day.
It’s a solid figure, especially when you consider we don’t have any federal legislation on staff-to-resident ratios for residential aged care.
Putting in the hours
Check out the graph above from the survey. It shows the average hours worked per residents per day across over the 850 aged care facilities surveyed plus the average for the top 25 per cent of these.
In 2007, the gap between the overall average and the top Band 1 average was just under one hour. It’s now dropped to just 16 minutes per resident per day.
So all residents are receiving close to the same amount of care across the board – this is good news.
But it also highlights that the fact residents in our nursing homes are requiring increasing levels of care.
More people in need of care
A recent survey of 3,200 aged care nurses and personal care workers by researchers at Flinders University and the University of South Australia found residents should receive an average of four hours and 18 minutes of care per day.
Providers need to have the funding to do this. 70 per cent of their costs are staffing-related.
They are already struggling to attract staff to the sector. As we reported here, aged care nurses are already paid less than their colleagues in the public health system.
By 2025, it’s predicted there will be as many as 392,000 people living in aged care up from 190,000 now. How will we guarantee our elderly receive the support they need?
