Research impact The corporatisation of Australian residential aged care

The challenge

In Australia, residential aged care is becoming increasingly concentrated, with a decline in the number of independent, mission-oriented homes and an expansion of homes operated by multi-site, corporatised providers. The concentration of residential places operated by large corporate entities has raised questions about residents’ quality of care. This project investigates the effects of corporate structure on quality of care by examining home acquisitions, focusing on home ownership changes between providers of differing operational scale.

Solution

The analysis is conducted using home and quality data for a large sample of Australian residential aged care homes from 2015 to 2019 sourced from the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. The available data contains the information needed to understand how changes in home ownership impact levels of quality care, measured by preventable hospitalisations of residents and resident complaints to the regulator while considering ownership structures (for-profit, etc.) and operational scale (number of facilities run).

Outcome and impact

The project contributes to limited evidence on the corporatisation of aged care in Australia by documenting how provider’s profit-making motives result in differences in quality outcomes delivered to care recipients. These findings hold significance across the fields of governance, corporate strategy, and policy within healthcare – with evidence to inform the practice agenda for Australia’s residential aged care sector.