As developer focus shifts from aged care to residential villages, the impact is being felt in the ACT and around the country.

The ACT’s Health Director-General Peggy Brown is concerned that hospital beds are being taken up by people waiting for places in residential aged care.

An elderly patient was recently forced to wait two days in emergency before being admitted to a ward.

This example of ‘access block’, patients who find themselves stuck in the city’s hospitals while staff search for suitable residential aged care, has been exacerbated by a major redevelopment of facilities in the city said Dr Brown.

“That impacts on hospital demand because we can’t get older people out,” she said.

Relative to its population of older people, the ACT has the lowest proportion of residential aged care places in Australia: 77.8 places per 1000 people aged 70 or over. The national average is 83.7.

And with a growing developer focus on residential villages instead of aged care facilities in Australia, that number is likely to slip, placing even greater strain on the struggling hospital system.