His comments came at question time at a public seminar attended by about 30 people and addressed by 2006-07 Harkness Fellow Mark Booth, whose work compares long-term health-care policies for the elderly in the United States and New Zealand.
Prof Taylor said during the time he was visiting a dying semi-conscious relative at a "posh'' Christchurch rest-home he had noted she was not visited by anyone else. The home felt like a series of isolation rooms.
If a child were subjected to such treatment he would not tolerate it, he said. "We are doing to our elders things we would not do to our children.''
Prof Taylor asked whether the attitude in the United States to care for the elderly was different from that in New Zealand.
Mr Booth, who is a principal policy adviser and manager within the Ministry of Health on secondment to the Minister of Health, said the culture change movement in the United States, which advocates rest-homes being as similar to living in a family home as possible, was gaining ground.
Some rest-homes in New Zealand, including in Dunedin, were also trying to introduce culture change ideas, but at this stage it was difficult to get an overall view of how widespread they had become.
One of the biggest barriers which rest-homes struck in the United States was staff resistance, but once changes had been made, staff said they would never go back to the old way of working.
Changes could include flexible rising times and meal times, close involvement with local communities, and altering buildings so they resembled family homes.
Where these measures were introduced, the elderly, who often felt bored, lonely or helpless in traditional long-term care, lived longer, Mr Booth said.
Harkness Fellowships in health-care policy and practice are offered by private American foundation The Commonwealth Fund.
Mr Booth spent a year as a fellow working from Brown University's Centre for Gerontology and Health Care Research in Rhode Island.
