Australia’s healthcare system faces ‘baby boomer freight train’
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Australia must embrace home care as a central element of its healthcare model to address the challenges posed by an ageing population, according to leading demographer Bernard Salt AM.
Salt emphasised the inadequacy of current hospital-focused healthcare strategies to meet the needs of the burgeoning elderly population.
“The baby boomer freight train is heading straight for us,” Salt said. “We will have to deal with an issue at a scale that humanity has never had to deal with previously: so many people in a stage of the life cycle where they need so much care.”
Salt highlighted the need for innovative solutions, such as providing care at home, to manage the growing demand without imposing unsustainable tax burdens.
“The two options we have would be to ratchet up taxes to a stratospheric level or find innovative solutions, and providing care at home is one way to do that,” he said.
Salt described the baby boomer generation as one that will insist on being mobile, active, and engaged. “They will make it clear how their care should be delivered, and the vast majority will want in-home care,” he said. “As a consequence, we will see the care sector redefined, reimagined, and repurposed by the emerging older baby boomer generation.”
Home Care Solutions Urgently Needed
Based on Australian Bureau of Statistics data, Salt noted that the population aged 85 and older is expected to exceed 2 million by 2071, with annual net growth peaking at 62,000 in 2032. He also called for a shift in how society perceives and categorises older Australians. “It has to be more nuanced than describing older people as simply being, for example, aged 55-plus. There’s a vast difference between being 55 and 85,” he said.
The Silverchain Symposium, hosted as part of the organisation’s 130th-anniversary celebrations, brought together healthcare leaders to explore the future of care in Australia. Silverchain Group Chief Executive Dale Fisher AM called attention to international trends favouring home care and urged Australia to follow suit.
“When you examine the international health care direction and progressive policies overseas that incentivise the shift to home care, Australia falls well short of the proportion of care that can be and should be delivered in the home,” Adj Prof Fisher said. “Importantly, consumers want this shift, but policy and funding are lagging behind.”
Fisher argued for investment in digital infrastructure to support home care services, which she said would alleviate pressure on hospitals. “It makes social and economic sense to divert our current investment in bricks and mortar to digital infrastructures that enable more care to be provided in the home,” she said. “The future of care is in the home.”
Ritchelle is a Content Producer for Healthcare Channel, Australia’s premier resource of information for healthcare.
