Reforms must stop hospitals becoming boarding houses for the aged

Editorial

October 29, 2026 — 5:08pm

Our story of David Witt, trapped in Royal North Shore Hospital for four months because a placement could not be found in an aged care facility, is both tragic and a possible glimpse of the future.

Seventy-four-year old Witt has Parkinson’s disease, and the Herald’s Rachel Rasker reports he left RNSH on Thursday. But since July, he was gridlocked with some 1100 other older patients trapped in NSW hospitals, medically ready to leave but stuck in limbo because there was no room in aged care facilities.

At last count in June, there were 34 stranded patients within RNSH awaiting an NDIS or aged care spot, and 96 across Northern Sydney Local Health District. If the current trends continue, the number of stranded aged care patients is expected to be close to 1700 by June 2027, according to NSW Health projections.

Hospitals call it “bed block”, and the number of aged care patients marooned in hospitals across Australia reportedly has surged by more than 35 per cent in less than a year.

But for Baby Boomers reaching their twilight years, it may get even tougher, with demand for residential aged care beds projected to nearly double in coming decades.

NSW Health Minister Ryan Park admitted that the aged care bed block crisis was arguably the most difficult challenge facing the health system. “People are left languishing in hospital beds that they shouldn’t be in ... but we simply have no other place for them,” Park said. “That’s not fair on them as individual patients, it’s not fair on their families, and it’s certainly not fair on our healthcare staff.”

Solutions will require further investment and better co-ordination between the federal and state governments that control these systems. Funding for aged services has nearly doubled since 2018, but the Albanese government’s plans of an additional 5000 aged care beds annually came temporarily unstuck because they were linked to being funded by cuts to the health insurance rebate for over 65s.

Hospitals are hit by bed block partly due to a two-tiered system that encourages largely privatised aged care facilities to favour self-funded patients because they pay more than government-funded patients.

But the growing tsunami of ageing Australians demands that governments look beyond the provision of beds as the holy grail of aged care.

One area worth reinvestigation is keeping people in their homes. Domiciliary services once conducted by local government and not-for-profit organisations have been severely underfunded since the sector heavily tilted towards privatisation. The Albanese government’s attempt to step into the breach last November with its Support at Home program removed humans from its clinical assessments and introduced an algorithm that drew comparisons to robo-debt.

The adage that a true measure of society is the treatment of the most vulnerable members casts a shadow across NSW’s aged care system.

David Witt was exposed to four months of human stress and hospital bugs awaiting an aged care bed. As things stand, it is a fate that awaits many.

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The Herald's View – Since the Herald was first published in 1831, the editorial team has believed it important to express a considered view on the issues of the day for readers, always putting the public interest first.

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