The issue of unequal distribution of aged care services and funding across geographical areas has been an area of policy concern for some decades. It features in a number of important government reports on aged care services, including the report of the House of Representative Standing Committee on Expenditure: In a Home or at Home: Accommodation and Home Care for the Aged, the Nursing Homes and Hostels Review (DCS 1986) and the Report of the Mid-Term Review of the Aged Care Reform Strategy (DHHCS 1991a, b).
More recent policy directions, including the expansion of multipurpose services and services approved under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Strategy, testify to the continuing interest of politicians, public officers responsible for service planning and the community in improving geographical equity with regard to aged care services.
In 1996, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare released a report - Aged care services in Australia's States and Territories, Aged Care Series No 2 (Mathur 1996, out of print). According to this report, the pattern of aged care services varies considerably on a state and territory basis. Victoria, for example, has in the past been identified as a state providing high levels of Home and Community Care (HACC) services, but relatively low levels of nursing home and hostel places. New South Wales, on the other hand, provided HACC services at a level very close to the national average, but had the highest level of nursing home provision and among those having the lowest levels of hostel provision.
The Aged Care Unit has released a Working Paper (Gibson et-al 2000) on spatial equity in the distribution of aged care services, taking the earlier state and territory based comparisons one step further by introducing a regional component to the analysis. This paper aims to address the spatial equity issue by analysing aged care services (both residential and community-based aged care services) by four geographic categories: capital cities, other metropolitan areas, rural areas and remote areas. More recently, this information has also been published in the Australasian Journal on Ageing in an article by Gibson, Braun & Liu (Australasian Journal on Ageing Vol 2 p80-86 (PDF)). The text of this article is available on this website with the kind permission of the AJA.