Health New Zealand denies excluding aged care sector from future planning

New Zealand’s Health Ministry has denied suggestions it has excluded the aged care sector from its planning for future care models, saying it is still examining various options.

The Aged Care Association has criticised Health New Zealand for not including them in its comprehensive redesign.

The company’s chief executive Tracey Martin said it had received piecemeal information but what it had seen was worrying, with indications that Health NZ was planning to reduce hospital bed nights by 200,000 a year to save money, at the direction of Health Minister Shane Reti.

“We are very concerned about the situation in Te Whatu Ora at the moment. We believe that the Cabinet has written a document that will make it harder to get into the care homes, while removing some housing and community supports in order to save money.” he said RNZ’s Nine to Noon.

But Te Whatu Ora’s anti-ageing director Andy Inder said the agency was assessing the feedback.

“We actively socialised the concept models through our interactions with our stakeholders – industry representatives, service providers and aged care sector service users,” he said.

This week, health officials met with the Department for Primary Industries to make broader recommendations on the ageing population across the motu.

Mr Inder said understanding future demand was critical to ensuring health services outside of aged care facilities could continue to have the capacity to care for older New Zealanders in the community.

“We need to start thinking and working across institutions and organisations in the context of wider health, social and economic services and conditions to ensure that any business model concept can and will work to meet the needs of our current and future ageing population. It would be remiss to do this in isolation.”

He said no firm date had yet been given for any recommendations to the Cabinet.

“Our projections, based on a range of options that have not yet been finalised, do not show that we will need or require 8,000 additional home and community support workers (as calculated by the Aged Care Association). This indicative modelling has been shared with sector representatives and discussed at length in various forums over the past four months.”