Health of Older People initiatives underway

National Health Board

A number of initiatives are underway to address the projected increase in demand for health and support services from New Zealand's aging population.

In January, the Minister of Health, Hon Tony Ryall, sent a 'Letter of Expectations' to all District Health Board (DHB) Chairs outlining the key areas they were expected to focus on during 2011/12 to meet the impact of our aging population on health and support services. These included:

• improving older people's underlying health and wellbeing - particularly in the areas of mental health, dementia and preventing disease and injury
• building better systems - including using standardised monitoring and audit tools to improve quality across home-care and aged residential care 
• providing new and expanded services - concentrating on dementia, and primary and community care improvements to avoid hospital admissions
• supporting family/whanau - in particular, provision of and access to respite care, day programmes and social support
• engaging in next steps to work on the recommendations of the 2010 aged residential care review.

While the country's population as a whole is expected to grow by around 20 percent to five million by 2026, it's estimated the population aged 65 and over will increase by 84 percent. As a result of this aged population growth, Treasury estimates that by 2051 expenditure on older people will consume more than 60 percent of the total health budget.

Arawhetu Gray, Acting Manager, Populations Policy Group, says a lot of work is underway to look at how integrated programmes (that provide a range of care, from independent living to full residential care for older people) can be funded and delivered.

The integrated programmes focus on "workforce development, including, clinical and residential care. Home-based support workforces are also being looked at, along with the need for more flexible approaches to how the additional funding provided for respite care can be used to support carers" says Arawhetu.

A recent development already improving the care of older people's health is the increasing use of InterRAI, a clinical personal assessment tool for aged residential care facilities, which is internationally recognised and comprehensive.

InterRAI software takes into account all of an older person's medical and social conditions to guide aged care assessors to develop comprehensive clinical assessments for individuals.