As President of Australia’s Retirement Living Council and CEO of RetireAustralia, Alison Quinn was keynote speaker in Auckland.
She was on her way back from Canada where she had taken her Board to study home care for a week (a private trip organised by Judy Martin and Sage).
RetireAustralia has an ambition to have one in three of its residents utilising care services by 2021 – and by that date they intend having 7,000 residents, up from about 3,750 now (adding an average of 650 a year).
They have a pipeline of 350 development sites now but intend delivering 300 new units a year by 2021.
For the sector, she would like to see it become “more collegiate” and she dreams of the day when a new resident pays one single capital entry fee and nothing else for the rest of their life (apart from weekly fees). That said she believes the DMF is here to stay for the foreseeable future.
She reiterated the Grant Thornton research commissioned by the Retirement Living Council that identified that residents of retirement villages entered residential aged care at an average age of 84 compared to the general public at 79 – five extra years at home and 5 years saved from Government expense in aged care at $52,000 a year. A saving of $2B.
This dollar extension may be tenuous but the strong fact is that village residents are less likely to enter care and if they do, it is a lot later and therefore for a lot shorter time. This should be promoted.
