No recommendations for changing the Otago and Southland district health boards' approach to solving the shortage of long-stay beds for the elderly are contained in a report on the issue to go before the disability support advisory committee today.
The report from the boards' planning and funding department outlines seven options, but its conclusion suggests continuing the approach of informing providers about future trends and the boards' intentions to significantly reduce rest-home level care.
This would allow services to make well-informed business decisions.
The option that the boards build and own their own long-stay residential hospital was not considered viable.
The boards did not have the capital and were unlikely to be able to get further funding, it was not core business for the boards, it would take too long and was probably only an option for Dunedin or Invercargill, the report stated.
Building a hospital and leasing it to a community service would not solve the capital issues and if the lease was to be attractive to a provider that would be at the boards' cost.
Paying a premium for all long-stay beds would be expensive as increasing the cost paid for every patient by a $1 a day would increase the annual cost by $160,000.
It would also "unnecessarily reward" already sustainable providers and might not result in extra beds.
Ministry of Health permission would be needed, as would the boards tendering for further capacity, seeking providers on the basis of quality and price offered.
It would inevitably lead to a higher price being paid and there would be criticism from the sector that a two-tier price structure was being introduced, the report stated.
In its favour, however, it would allow any new beds to be purchased more easily in several locations.
About 12 extra beds for long-stay elderly patients are expected to be available in the next few months, but this will not ease the situation for those needing psychogeriatric or dementia care.
The extra beds are the result of rest-home owners converting some beds to hospital beds.
Community providers have been reluctant to provide new beds because they say the national pricing allocated to such beds makes it unviable.
The report notes exploratory discussions are continuing across the region with those who may be interested in providing new aged-care facilities.
