Counting the minutes on allied health care

At the end of 2023, the Australian Council of Deans of Health Sciences launched a model that it had commissioned — designed to allow policymakers to see how different policy settings would affect the numbers of allied health workers needed in Australia over the coming years.

Currently, Australians receiving aged care are, on average, only obtaining eight minutes of allied health care per day. The Final Report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety recommended that be raised to 22 minutes a day to bring Australia in line with international standards.

However, the ACDHS model found that in order to achieve 22 minutes a day by 2033, Australia would need to train another 25,000 allied health professionals. Due to the high demand, obstacles to supply and the overall time required to increase the number of fully qualified allied health professionals, the training would have needed to start when the model was first released.

By the time this article has been published, we will already be eight months behind that timeline.

And that was just to meet the international benchmark cited by the Royal Commission report. If Australia decided that its older people deserved better care — say, for instance, 30 minutes a day of allied health care — then another 38,000 trained professionals would be required in order for this to be successfully delivered.

Allied healthcare professionals include occupational therapists, psychologists, nutritionists, pharmacists and speech pathologists, who help maintain the good health of older Australians. Without this care, these Australians are more likely to end up in hospital, where beds are already scarce and staff stretched. Preventative care is good for individuals and good for the whole healthcare system.

The ACDHS model found that there are other ways to ensure there are enough allied health workers to meet the international benchmark. Increasing pay for allied health workers could, for instance, increase retention in professions with high attrition rates. Similarly, making studying these professions more affordable could make them attractive to a greater number of students. The ACDHS has been advocating that the Commonwealth Prac Payment scheme, which helps students studying nursing, teaching and social work to afford to complete the practical element of their training, be extended to allied health professionals.

However, eight months after the model demonstrated the challenge, the government is yet to declare whether it backs the international benchmark of 22 minutes or whether it is content to let Australians in aged care make do with the eight minutes the Royal Commission found to be inadequate.

If it still wants to work towards the Royal Commission target of improving care, the government will need to commit to one of the solutions proposed by the ACDHS — or otherwise back further research to understand what level of allied health in aged care is adequate to deliver care to residents and prevent an undue burden on the wider health system.

If the government does nothing, one might assume that it tacitly endorses a target which falls short of international best practice. In that case, it is over to Australians to declare whether or not they believe that target is good enough for their loved ones — and indeed themselves — in old age.

Professor Terry Haines is Head of the School of Primary and Allied Health Care at Monash University, overseeing five departments, 150+ staff and 180+ research higher degree students. With a background in physiotherapy and health economics, he has over 15 years of research experience in health services. He is a founding investigator of the National Centre for Healthy Ageing and has led groundbreaking trials in falls prevention in hospitals and developed innovative research trial methodologies. Professor Haines has over 400 published works and received over $80 million in research funding. He has received multiple awards for his leadership and contributions to health research and education.

Image credit: iStock.com/Jacob Wackerhausen