Strategy in Comparison Dementia Policies †MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Strategy in Comparison Dementia Policies. Answer: Introduction: Medical advancements made in the present generation have opened up many new technological inventions, modern trends of care as well as innovative means of handling different disorders. As a result diseases which used to take the lives of individuals at different ages could have been prevented. Hence, this has resulted in greater life expectancy of the citizens which had in turn inculcated a greater population of the old age people in the country of Australia (Duckett Willcox et al., 2015). Therefore the need to attend the senior citizens and to care for their need about health has become significant. With the growing of the population of the senior citizens, the burden of co morbid diseases and the sufferings of the old age are also increasing. Through present day care and medications are extending the lives of the old population but are not ensuring the quality of the life that very individual deserves (Barrie, 2017). Often old aged peoples are seen to suffer from co-morbid disease s with huge sufferings towards their end stage when most of their physiological activities of the body become weak. All these lead to strenuous situations not only for the patient but also for the family members. Hence, due to this, Australia has placed an importance in the development of effective old aged care services (Barrie et al., 2017). They have ensured the development of care services which provide the best care to old patients and also ensure that they lea their end days with the best health. The thesis statement would be with the increase of the aged population, Australia has been able to successfully measure the economic impact and is trying its best to evolve the aged care to a more successful sector of healthcare. The following assignment will mainly describe the structure of the aged care in Australia, the economic impact of providing aged care services to such people and how it has evolved over the years to meet the needs of patients. These would help to understand t he present scenario f aged care services in Australia and how they are supporting the needs of the old aged people. With the increase in number of the old aged populations, the nation has become successful in identifying the recognized need of implementing range of residential aged care services as well as the community based care services to ensure that proper treatments are provided to old people who are suffering from co-morbid diseases (Britt et al., 2013). It has been seen that the Commonwealth as well as the Sate governments extend their hands cooperatively in funding and thereby providing proper aged care services. Mainly two types of aged care are delivered in Australia. The first one is the Residential care and the second one is the community care (Lawn et al., 2017). The residential care I usually funded, regulated and controlled by the commonwealth. It has been seen that old aged people sometimes suffer from complex as well a chronic conditions. They require care for almost throughout the day. For such patients, high level or nursing home care is present who provide high level care service to such ill patients. Secondly there is another level of residential care called the low level or hostel care. in case of some patients, high level care is not needed but moderate care according to certain requirements to old patients are provided(Radford, Shacklock Bradley, 2015). In such cases, patients mostly live in low level of care and need support with activities of daily lives and other basic household maintenance. Such patients can access help only when they need it and in other times they prefer to live in their own units. However, there is another form of services which are providing both the above types of services mentioned. They provide both the levels of care. This service provides every opportunities of care for the patient in his home until the symptoms intensify. They are then transferred to the higher levels of care within their original facilities as the patient get older (Hillen et al., 2017). Another form of care other than the residential care is called the community based care. This type of care is jointly funded and as well as administered by the Commonwealth and also the state or territory governments. They mainly comprise of three different types of programs. The first one is the community aged care packages also called the CACP. This is actually a community alternative for all those old sick patients who would have been qualified for low level residential care. Another type of community based care is the home and community care program called the HACC. This can be described as the home based program for the old patients along with patients who are disabled and also comprises of carers (Broad et al/, 2013). Another type of programs that come under community based care is the respite programs. These programs mainly focus on the frail and aged persons who are cared and looked after y family members at home or by other significant persons. This type of care mainly helps the caregivers to get a break from in a day center commitment. This help can range in time and the patients taking the care may be placed in the day center or in an aged care facility. They can be also taken for outings by their carers (McLachlan, 2013). In the nation of Australia it is usually seen that the Federal government takes the responsibility of collecting the taxes and then they distribute the collected funds between the state and the territory governments. The money is then transferred to the residential as well as the community based care centers from all the forms of the government. Organizations that are depending on the government for the accumulation of funds have to abide by several standards (Lewin et al., 2014). The standards are mainly the residential aged care standards, disability standards and also the home and community care standards. Older people face different types of issues. These may be physical, cognitive as well as social. Also various changes in family dynamics and loss of independence may also require them to need for a carer. Also different types of financial as well as transport issues may remain associated with many old aged patients (Nakanishi Nakashima, 2014). Whenever any old aged citizens confront with any such age related issues which cannot be solved by them or when they cannot look after themselves failing to maintain proper quality lives, then they can seek for support from residential care or community care support systems. Three main bodies are found to be responsible for regulation and maintaining compliance relating to the provision of the aged care services. They take part in sharing information with each other to carry out the duties responsibly. The first body is the DoH who is responsible for maintaining the policy and compliance with the ACT. The other is the Australian Aged Care Quality Agency (AACQA)who mainly performs the responsibility in providing accreditation to the competent care providers who are skilled and knowledgeable. The Aged care complaints commissioner mainly handles the complaints which are made about aged the aged care services provided (Squires Anderson et al., 2015). Australia is seeing an increase in population mainly due to the sustained low fertility and increase in the life expectancy. This has thereby resulted in proportionally fewer children under the age of 15 in the population and the growing increase in the population which is higher than 65 and more. Statistical analysis has stated that between the year 1996 and 2016. The population aged from 15-64 years has remained stable rather decreasing by very low margin of 66.6% to 65.9% (Bellamy et al., 2013). During the same period, proportion of people living over the age of 65 years and over has increased. It has increased from 12.0 to 15.3 %. It is striking to see that the population above 85 and over has almost doubled from 1.1% from 1996 to that of 2.0% in 2016. Many researchers are of the opinion that older people are subjected to using the healthcare services at a higher rate per person than many other Australians. This can be proved by the finding that costs per person in the pharmaceutical benefits scheme are entirely age related. It has been found that the average costs for male aged 65 to 74 are found to be about 18 times higher than those for male who are form 15 to 24. In the similar way, also hospital; costs also follow a steep age profile and the Medicare cost is also found to rise with age in a similar and slightly less steep manner (Dewing Djik et al., 2016). The overall health expenditure over the 65 s is found to be higher as about more than 4 times per person in comparison to those who are under 65. With further older groups, the amount increases from 6 to 9 times more (Li et al., 2015). There is a complex facet to this discussion. Many researchers are of the opinion that with passing of more decades that aging will not have as large an impact on the healthcare resources and costs because they believe that old people will significantly live a healthier life in future. However, no solid proves or facts could be established to support this. Many researchers oppose such statements where they are of the opinion that chronic conditions among the older patients are sill noted but disability rates have however lowered. This should not be considered similar as the connection of the facts are suggesting that although medical interventions have lowered the rate of disability and trauma associated with morbidity but the conditions still prevails (Broad et al., 2013). It may be seen at a glance that many of the older individuals are having high health status but detailed review will establish the fact that the use of effective and costly treatments are mainly helping to maintain health status in them. The main trend that is observed here is that costly treatments are helping them to maintain better health rather better health leading to low cost treatments (Milte et al., 2014). This can be explained by an example. In order to develop the mobility of the old age people, often hip replacement are done to develop the mobility of the patient and to relieve them from pain. However, these are relatively costly operation and results in huge expenditure of healthcare resources on the aged patients. Recent studies have shown that the use of formal aged care is going to increase by three fold as the population aged over 80 years has increased from 3.3 % in 2002-2003 to that of 2044 to 9.1% in 2045-2045. With the reduction in the disability rates, the number f high and low care residents are projected to increase by around 215 percent between the recent years and 2045 (Osorn et al., 2014). Statistics suggest that the costs of aged care will be increasing by around 2.6 times more than the nations growth of the GDP over the nest twenty five years. Already it has been seen that the costs as share of the GDP are projected to 0.85 % in the year 2002 and this price will ultimately reach to 2.24 percent in the year 2044-45. Researchers are also of the opinion that with the increasing trend of the aged population and pressure that will result in the per person cost in mostly the community cares and residential cares, will also result in problems in arranging for proper number of carers to meet the proper patient nurse ratio (Graves et al., 2014). It can be shown with the help of a graph system. Fiscal pressure is often defined as the extent to which spending of the government is actually outpacing the revenue growth. Although healthcare costs has not been solely designated as the main factor for the rise of fiscal pressure on the government but is had been considered as one of the most important factor contributing to it (Duckett et al., 2015). They have also stated that significant pressures are also occurring due to the aged care service and age pensions. Many of the researchers have argued on the points that with the increase of the appending on the aged care, there has been also decline in the educational costs and safety net payments like unemployment benefits and family based payments as the age structure importance is shifting away from the young. However, this decrease in very less in comparison to the huge increase in the pressure of spending of the government and this can be established with the help of a data chart. It is stated that by the age of 2045, a fiscal gap of about 6.4 per cent will be noted which will build gradually over the years. An impact of the aging population can be associated with the increasing of the dependency rates. As the retirement age is being fixed and more people are claiming pension benefits with fewer people working and paying taxes, it will lead to improper fund gathering for the healthcare resources. These will in turn compromise the care delivered at the different residual and community centers. Increased spending of the government on healthcare and pensions are mainly taking place as the people in their retirement are spending less on income tax as they are not working. This is resulting in the combination of higher spending commitments as well as lower tax revenue is acting as a concern for the Australian government (Kulling et al., 2014). All these are leading to a scenario where crisis may occur in maintenance of the economic condition of the nation and hence, proper polices and strategies need to be adapted by the nations for proper balance of finance and healthcare for aged effectively. The formal aged care system of Australia has evolved in the ad hoc way. The government of the nation has been involved initially as the fund allocator of the maintenance subsidies for pensioners in the Benevolent Asylums. This took place from 1909 to 1963. During this time payments were mainly provided as a substitute for the Age pension. With the passing of year, the costs of the aged care were found to outgrow the level of the age pension. It was during this time, when the government became involved in funding the age care. It was found that proper involvement in the domain of the capital funding of the aged care homes first occurred with the help of the housing initiative. This came under the Aged Persons Homes Act in the year 1954. In funding care, the introduction of the nursing home benefits took place in 1963. Various other reforms were undertaken in the 1980 like development of home and community care. In the years 1990s, intensive care services were initiated in homes and re sidential cares (Powell et al., 2017). Different reforms took place keeping three important domains in the priority like that of pension, housing and healthcare policies. Data states that by the year 2010-2011, total commonwealth expenditure on the health and other betterment of the older population surpassed $60.2 billion that counts for about 4.3% of the GDP. Moreover there was a 53% of the spending on age pension and 19% on the aged care. Currently for the past few years, the aged care system is currently world class. Older patients are now seen to live longer with better health and better healthcare. Severe changes had been brought into the system of the healthcare for aged people in order to assure that care provided is sustainable and affordable. It also tries to ensure that the system may offer choice and flexibility for consumers. Besides, the aged care facilities are encouraging business to invest and grow followed by the provision of the diverse as well as the rewarding career options. One of the biggest changes that have been incorporated in the care services is developing a consumer directed care where greater choices are given to patents (Bellamy Brown et al., 2013). In this case, the care provided to the patients will entirely be based on their needs. However, researchers are of the opinion that although traditional image of the aged care mainly bases its foundation of the residential aged care, most patie nts want to access service where they want to stay independent and close to their family members. They want to remain connected with their family and community for a much longer time and hence initiatives are taken nowadays extensively in home care support and for this, investment in home care packages are made. This type of care service provides them with higher levels of choice and flexibility in domains of homes based care. During the year 2012 to 2013 and 2013 to 2014 saw urgent improvements in the aged care services and also made further reforms in the different new Home Care Packages and supplements which were introduced in home care and other residential care. My Aged Care, a system where collection of information can be done by aged people and other family members were established along with a national contact centre began operating (Drummond et al., 2015). Moreover the Australian Aged care Quality Agency was established. The Aged Care Pricing commission was also established. During the years of 2014 to 2016, has mainly seen improvement in accessing and providing choices the consumers in getting healthcare services. A stronger system of sustainability was achieved. They have been successful in implementing the national voluntary quality indicators for aged care along with the introduction of the national fee framework for the Commonwealth Home Support Programme. From this year, to the upcoming years up to 2021-2022, changes will be implemented after proper consultation with aged care services. This mainly will be including the single quality framework which will help in increasing the focus on the quality outcomes for the consumers. Moreover the legislation has also mandated that a five year review will also be undertaken to look at the different impacts till date. This will be helping the nation to further modify the systems for the better provision of aged care in the future. (Graves et al., 2014) That various visions et of rte coming years are providing sustainable and affordable care services, offering choice and flexibility, supporting people staying at home and community to stay there as further as possible. From the entire discussion, it has been two mainly forms of aged care services are present in the nation of Australia. These are residential care services and the community care services. Each of the sectors are providing respective packages to their patients depending upon their needs both based on short term needs or long term needs. With the medical advancements and technological advancements, different initiatives are taken by these care services to meet the rising demands of the aged patients. There has been an increased economic burden due to increase in dependency ratios, increased GDP as well as die to per person increased capita. With the proper balance between the financial investments and proper care provided to patients, the economic turmoil can be handled by proper policies. With the gradual passing of years since 1900s to the present generation, every decade has sustainable increase in development of aged care. Presently, the aged care services provide more choices and flexibility to the patients, provide a more patient centered approach and provide a more sustainable method of caring. 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