Funding regimes and the implications for delivering quality palliative care nursing within residential aged care units in Australia.

BACKGROUND

Funding to Australian residential aged care units has undergone recent reforms. Parallel with these fiscal developments, the Australian Government commissioned the Guidelines for a Palliative Approach in Residential Aged Care that addressed the inequities of service associated with dying in residential aged care.

AIMS

This literature review describes the variances in funding between Australian residential aged care facilities (RACFs), and multi-purpose services (MPSs) and, in doing so, exposes the impact that funding variances have on the delivery of end-of-life and palliative care to residents in aged care units.

FINDINGS

Government funding policy allowed RACFs an opportunity to adopt and implement the guidelines and standards, through funding individual resident identified healthcare needs. By comparison, MPSs are funded through an agreed (government and organisation) number of beds to provide nursing care to residents. This funding allocation forms MPSs' general consolidated revenue for service delivery.

KEY ISSUES

RACFs identify nursing care needs of residents through a residential classification scale, while management of MPSs allocates funding to service provision.

CONCLUSIONS

The significant factor of funding beds (MPS) not the delivery of nursing care required by residents (RACFs) does impact on the implementation of a palliative approach for residents and, hence, the delivery of quality nursing care. Nursing management should consider funding implications when allocating resources to services in MPSs.