Date Time
AMA identifies savings of $21.2 billion in aged care hospital admissions
The AMA has estimated that over the year up until 30 June 2021, there will have been 27,569 admissions of residents from nursing homes to hospitals that were potentially avoidable, costing $312 million and accounting for 159,693 hospital patient days.
The staggering figure is the first national estimate of potentially preventable admissions to hospitals from nursing homes alone. In total, new AMA modelling has identified $21.2 billion of savings that could be made over four years if immediate reforms were implemented to our aged care system.
The $21.2 billion comprises four-year savings from potentially avoidable admissions to private and public hospitals from nursing homes ($1.4 billion), from older people in the community ($18.2 billion), those transferred to emergency departments but not admitted ($497 million), re-presentations to emergency departments within 30 days ($138 million) and people waiting in hospital for a place in a nursing home ($887 million).