Remember when Scott Morrison called the Royal Commission into aged care and I asked him about cuts to the aged care funding instrument and he denied it? Well have I got a story for you.

Briefing notes I got under FoI show the Department of Health created a "winners and losers" list after the funding revisions, losers almost tripled. Reports of staff being cut made it to the minister. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/health/savings-cuts-create-agedcare-losers/news-story/4f2cf2b7c2054f868dafa9fdcae725ac

Here is a bit of that exchange from the time: https://twitter.com/SquigglyRick/status/1041297392694308864

From the FoI docs. People are entering residential aged care older and more frail than ever. But Department’s own analysis shows support for behavioural issues (BEH) barely grew and complex healthcare (CHC) support fell on average of $400 per person

And yes, they really did a “winners and losers” analysis. Viability supplement is only paid to regional and rural facilities but they’ve averaged it over the entire sector to try and make it look better. Use the “before viability supplement” columns to the left.

Why does this all matter? The Royal Commission is widely expected, when it is all said and done, to recommend funding boosts to aged care in the order of billions of dollars every year. Care costs have been underfunded for a long time, any hit to funding growth compromises care.

Was there overclaiming of the ACFI subsidy for complex healthcare? It would seem like it, thought others have argued this was necessary due to poor general funding. In any case, the rorters tended to be the biggest aged care chains. But this cut hit every provider.

Long story short, I’ve covered aged care in every federal budget since 2013 and the PM announced the Royal Commission on a Sunday jn Canberra where I happened to be working, tried to bullshit me and I haven’t forgotten

PS: Ken Wyatt has put out a media release today making the same deliberately obtuse point about general aged care funding going up (places, not care funding) and then makes the point that in 2012 Labor also saves $1.2bn from the ACFI.

The second part is true. They did! They redirected this money to staffing costs and it was part of a broader package of actual reforms which protected providers from significant hit. The FoI briefs that Wyatt received told him as much.

As if my (above) point needed any more confirmation, the Royal Commission into Aged Care has just released a background paper on the sector. It's very top level, but this part is instructive. I'll have more on the broader issue in tomorrow's paper. https://agedcare.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/Documents/background-paper-1.pdf

Got my hands on data from Australian first study of aged care need, commissioned by minister and not yet released. It shows high-care nursing home residents support should double (the govt has been saying that providers are over-claiming at the top end) https://beta.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/health/nursing-home-funding-to-surge-under-blueprint-for-aged-care/news-story/f3e4adeac14e081530b12e05ee054447

The above study, known in govt as the Resource Utilisation Classification Study (RUCS) has come up with the new tool that will likely replace the Aged Care Funding Instrument, that thing I've been banging on about for a few years now. In other words, this is a Very Big Deal.