Aged Care Bed Crisis Costs SA Government Over $123m

South Australia's aged care bed crisis has come at a significant cost to the state government, with more than $123 million spent last financial year caring for patients stranded in hospitals waiting for a bed.

Data from SA Health shows that in 2025-26, the state government spent $123.7 million caring for older patients who were medically cleared for discharge but remained in hospital due to a lack of aged care beds.

Crisis in Aged Care

The average cost per day of caring for a patient waiting for an aged care bed was $1,318.

"The system is in crisis in terms of the availability of aged care beds quite clearly," SA Health Minister Blair Boyer said.

"Latest government data shows on Monday, there were 487 older patients in South Australian hospitals waiting for aged care beds."

"That is up from 60 patients in October 2022."

Call for Federal Action

Mr. Boyer has called on his federal counterpart to do more to fix the "crisis."

The state government estimated that the number of South Australians aged over 70 would almost double in the next 30 years.

Advocates have argued that the number of residential aged care beds has not kept up with the state's ageing population, and tighter aged care regulations have resulted in some providers becoming "risk averse" when choosing whether to accept patients with greater complexities, such as dementia.

"There's almost 500 older South Australians now who would like to be at home, or they'd like to be in residential aged care getting the support that they need, but instead they are stranded in hospital or an alternative hospital setting," Council on the Ageing (COTA) SA chief executive Miranda Starke said.

"In some cases, we know that people have been in that situation for almost four years now. It's really people putting their life on hold for that period of time."

Health Consequences

Australian Medical Association SA president Peter Subramaniam said patients could experience poorer health outcomes if they remained in hospital for longer than medically required.

"Older South Australians who are precious members of our community in fact get frailer, they get more muscle weakness, they get confused, they get more infections the longer they stay in hospital," he said.

Dr. Subramaniam said delayed discharges were also a contributing factor to ambulance ramping.

"If a bed is occupied for 100 days, that's between 15 to 20 patients who cannot access treatment," he said.

Government Response

An independent review of SA Health found that delayed hospital discharges were a "burden on our hospitals' efficiency."

Mr. Boyer said aged care was "fairly and squarely a federal responsibility," but the state government was trying to address the issue, including by establishing a $250 million no-interest loan scheme to increase the supply of aged care beds.

"I understand interest has been really strong from aged care providers to apply to access some of that $250 million to put towards capital to build new facilities so we can get new beds," he said.

"Our target out of that no interest loan bucket of money is to create 650 additional beds for South Australia."

Mr. Boyer and other state and territory health ministers met in Sydney last week to call on the federal government to commit to more Support at Home packages.

There are almost 100,000 people waiting for Support at Home packages across Australia.

A spokesperson for the federal government said it was spending $47 billion this financial year to strengthen the aged care system.

"In just the first year of the Support at Home program, we've made significant strides in rolling out an additional 83,000 places to support older people access the care they need — with an additional 32,000 places to come online in 2026-27," they said.

"We've already invested an unprecedented $1 billion through our aged care capital grants program, including more than $140 million for projects in South Australia and unlocking $135 million for 268 new beds in metropolitan Adelaide."

"We'll continue working with states and territories to ensure older Australians aren't stuck in hospital when they're ready to move on to more suitable care."

Federal Health Minister Mark Butler said the government had "dramatically" expanded support of home packages, but added that he had been "frank" with state ministers, describing the challenges as "a shared responsibility."

"We recognise we need more aged care supply given the sharp spike in demand the country generally is facing as the oldest of the baby boomers start to hit the age of entry into aged care," he said.

"We're doing what we can to work with the state government to relieve pressure on their hospital system — whether that's building aged care clinics or providing record funding increases of the type the South Australian government has never seen before from the Commonwealth to operate their hospitals."