Associate Health Minister Casey Costello. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
The government will begin rolling out a more flexible new system for delivering home care services to older people in the South Island on Wednesday.
Associate Health Minister Casey Costello said it was one of a series of improvements being made to the current aged care system, backed by a significant increase in funding.
The aged residential care sector has received a 4 percent funding uplift and would see a total increase of $96 million this year, while funding for home and community support services would increase by $44m.
The total funding increase of $140m this year was on top of an annual increase of $129m last year and meant government spending on aged care was now more than $2.5 billion.
"The reality is the current aged care model is out of date, so we are making improvements in the short term as well as considering system-level change," Costello said.
"The funding increases are aimed at relieving pressure on the sector and improving care services for older New Zealanders while we work towards the longer-term reform needed to better help people age well.
"The new service model will provide better care with a focus on keeping people as independent as long as possible," she said.
How will home care services change?
A new 'case mix' frame work and funding model would be introduced to provide more flexible care that was responsive to what people needed, and would step away from the current 'task-based' care plans where providers were paid by the hour.
Costello said under the current care model for a person receiving an hour of home care, they might get medicines delivered as one function and personal hygiene care as a separate function.
"This is shifting to more flexibility around the care being delivered, so rather than people coming in and out of your home, delivering a comprehensive service within this funding model."
Costello said currently about 20 percent of the home care budget was travel costs and she believed that under the new model that would shift.
Four providers had been contracted to provide the new model, and it would be rolled out in the South Island first. It would then be rolled out to the other three Health New Zealand regions to provide national consistency.
More reform on the way
Costello said Health New Zealand was also working with the aged care sector to update the current contract for aged care and to develop a better system for categorising care need.
"We know people going into residential care are coming in with much higher acuity needs than they used to, so we've got to shift palliative care needs, bariatric care needs into this funding model that doesn't exist at the moment," she said.
"We effectively have a very rigid rest home hospital and dementia care funding model and we know that there's a lot more needs that need to be met in the system."
She said she hoped to make some announcements in that space in the near future.
Age Concern pleased by rollout
Chief executive of Age Concern Karen Billings-Jensen said the sector had been under strain under the current model.
"I'm really pleased to see there's a focus on longer-term reform," she said.
"We hope that this announcement leads to communities being better served and older people having their needs met in a less transactional way around timing than the current system."
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