Australia’s ageing population is one of the most difficult challenges faced by hospitals. Emergency visits by the elderly are increasing, with over 65's making up almost half the people occupying hospital beds around the country. Some hospitals are taking a new approach to the problem, which is both improving care for the elderly and freeing up hospital beds for others.
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00:00It's a busy morning at St Vincent's emergency department in Melbourne and many of the patients
00:07are elderly. This man was brought in after blacking out on the street.
00:11Have you had other falls in the past? Geriatrician Richard Kane is doing the
00:19rounds of the older patients in an effort to avoid unnecessary hospital admissions.
00:24Being in hospital for an older person is a more risky experience than being in their
00:28own homes in many ways. Beverly Minogue's knee gave out last month and she was
00:32unable to climb the stairs to her bedroom. I've got osteoarthritis it's just it's all
00:39worn out it's bone on bone. When the 85 year old went to emergency she was
00:44expecting a lengthy hospital stay but thanks to a new program which embeds a
00:48geriatrician in the emergency department she went home the next day with daily
00:52visits from nurses and specialists instead. We find that people recover more
00:57quickly in their own environment. I think it's wonderful because like you can stay
01:02home you don't have to be stuck in the hospital and not be able to sleep. Hospital
01:07data shows that more than a hundred older patients have been diverted from wards
01:11like this one to either home rehabilitation or aged care over a one
01:16year period and more than 900 days of in-hospital care have been avoided. On any
01:22given day three or four patient beds are available for other patients upstairs that
01:26would otherwise have been filled by these patients. And the data suggests there was
01:31no increase in patients who were diverted coming back to hospital. Programs like this
01:36are increasing as the number of hospital beds per 1,000 people aged over 65 declines
01:41halving in the last 30 years. It's really quite a frightening glimpse into the
01:47future. The peak doctors group says any incoming federal government must
01:52prioritize a new longer-term funding agreement for hospitals to ensure they
01:56can meet these challenges. We also want to make sure that that funding drives the
02:01kind of care that we want and that our elderly Australians need. Labor has endorsed
02:06an increase in federal funding but not yet brokered a new agreement. The coalition
02:10says it would negotiate a new agreement as a matter of urgency.