Imagine this.

You’re in your 80s. You’ve lived a full life. You’ve raised children, worked hard, contributed to your community. Now, in your final chapter, you find yourself in residential aged care—surrounded by structure, staff, and services designed to keep you “safe.”

But what if safety isn’t enough?

What if you slowly begin to lose the ability to walk, to speak clearly, to remember names? What if the very services that could help you—physiotherapy, speech pathology, occupational therapy—were nowhere to be found?

Not because they don’t work.

But because they’re not funded.

Allied Health: The Most Effective Part of Aged Care You Rarely See

The benefits of allied health in residential aged care are not up for debate. The research is rock solid. Physiotherapy reduces falls. Occupational therapy improves independence. Speech pathology helps with swallowing, communication, and cognition. Allied health professionals help prevent pressure injuries, manage chronic pain, slow cognitive decline, and drastically improve quality of life.

In short: they give people quality of life.

So why are these services being drastically reduced within aged care homes?

The Funding Model That Changed Everything

In 2022, Australia shifted from the ACFI (Aged Care Funding Instrument) to the ANACC (Australian National Aged Care Classification) funding model. The goal was noble: tie funding more closely to individual needs and ensure care minutes were tracked, measured, and enforced. Great in theory, devastating in practice. Whilst we can concede that the ACFI funding model was heavily diagnosis focused, it rightly acknowledged the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to healthy ageing and funded allied health treatment for chronic conditions.

Under ANACC, aged care providers now receive more funding with a daily average of $308 per resident according to the latest Stewart Brown Report, with mandated care minutes at 215 minutes per day. Within those, Registered Nurses must provide at least 44 minutes of care daily, but allied health is not included. Not one minute. Not one dollar is protected.

From Essential to Optional: A Dangerous Downgrade

The impact was swift and brutal.

According to the latest data:

• Allied health time now averages just 4.21 minutes per resident per day
• Physiotherapy? Down to 2.75 minutes
• Speech pathology? 0.06 minutes

That’s about as long as it takes to say, “Hello, how are you feeling?”

The result? Aged care has become nursing-heavy and therapy-poor. While nurses and care workers do an incredible job under enormous pressure, they aren’t trained to provide the specialised support that allied health professionals deliver.

Allied health hasn’t been reimagined. It’s been erased.

The Numbers Behind the Neglect

Before ANACC, residents were already receiving just 8 minutes a day of allied health input—woefully inadequate by any standard. Now? Even less.

Currently, aged care providers spend around $6.85 per resident per day on allied health, which equates to less than 4% of total daily funding. Compare that to the Royal Commission’s call for a much more balanced, multidisciplinary model, and the gap becomes glaring.

Worse still, the Stewart Brown 2024 Aged Care Financial Performance Report shows that most providers, under mounting cost pressure, are cutting back on allied health to protect slim operating margins.

Because when funding is tight and regulations only mandate nursing time, allied health becomes the easiest thing to cut.

When Profit Shapes Practice

Let’s be blunt.

The Aged Care system we’ve built rewards compliance, not innovation. Providers are paid to meet care minute quotas—not to deliver holistic, best-practice care. So, they funnel resources where the mandates are, and everything else is treated as optional.

In that model, allied health becomes a luxury, not a necessity. And residents suffer the consequences.

This isn’t just a funding issue. It’s a values issue.

What If We Did Things Differently?

Now imagine a different system.

One where:

• Allied health is given a minimum mandated presence in care plans.
• Providers receive dedicated, ring-fenced funding for therapy services.
• Outcomes like mobility, cognition, and quality of life are tracked and rewarded.
• Multidisciplinary care is the standard—not the exception.

Would residents be happier? Healthier? Safer?

Would aged care be something we’re proud of, instead of something we fear?

What’s the Cost of Doing Nothing?

Every day we delay reform, people in aged care are missing out on care that could make their lives meaningfully better. Allied health has been left to dwindle, not because it doesn’t work, but because we haven’t protected it.

There is no federal or state commitment to developing new multidisciplinary care models. No incentive to innovate. No reward for doing better than the bare minimum.

This isn’t about tweaking the system. It’s about acknowledging that the system is failing in silence—and too few people are talking about it.

We Need to Fund What Works

If the Royal Commission taught us anything, it’s that aged care must be person-centred, not profit-centred. That doesn’t just mean more nurses. It means more of the right care, from the right people, at the right time. With the introduction of the new rights based Aged Care Act, it begs the question when will the government truly commit. That means funding allied health properly—not as an afterthought, but as a cornerstone.

Because care without therapy is just survival and our elders deserve more than that.

Let’s stop asking, “Can we afford it?” and start asking, “Can we afford not to?”