The hard conversation: is the aged care sector ‘viable’, and is it ‘sustainable’?

No.

We wish to invite readers to our LEADERS SUMMIT in three weeks’ time in Sydney.‘The business of ageing’ is our media role in the sector. This includes having the uncomfortable conversations – which we are bringing to the SUMMIT. It is 13 months since the Royal Commission commenced and their Final Report will not be delivered until 12 November – eight months from now. The sector is becoming less viable with each day. The Commissioners this week were severely critical of operators, saying they have been “reluctant to engage fully” in discussing their own future. Join this panel to have the hard conversations.

In this Q&A session, we ask the panel: Q. Why is the ‘leadership’ so ‘tired’ it can’t see a way forward? Who will be the new leaders? Q. Why wait for each RAC to fall over to achieve ‘consolidation’? Isn’t it kinder to accelerate the process? Q. The Government is the ‘paying customer’, the regulator and the policeman. How can it be made responsible for performing responsibly, as a ‘partner’? And more, over 60 minutes. Plus, you can ask questions of the panel: Grant Corderoy is the most experienced advisor to large and small aged care operators across the country. Cynthia Payne has been a leading aged care provider and is now supporting RAC management and boards navigate the regulatory landscape and rebuild poor performing businesses. Frank Price has lived social justice and came to RFBI’s leadership from his CFO role. He has led amalgamations with struggling operators, balancing RFBI’s own sustainability. Nick Loudon grew the Seasons private aged care business, separating accommodation from care, which he delivers through his regional Envigor Home Care model. Paul Browne has envisaged a world without residential aged care and is delivering it in his LDK ‘user pays’ villages, which are delivering runaway sales. Leigh Kildey leads the single 136-bed church diocese based aged care home in Sydney, together with a local home care service. She is the guardian of a 70-year heritage and community investment. If the current model delivers an unsustainable service industry, a dispirited public, dispirited residents and a dispirited workforce, is the only solution wholesale change, with the sacrifice of many existing operators for the ‘greater good’ and real sustainability? Please join your 600 colleagues for real conversations at the LEADERS SUMMIT.