NSW announces review into 'stranded' aged care patients

With the current system described by NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey as “unfair for patients and unsustainable for the broader hospital system”, the NSW Productivity & Equality Commission has announced that it will conduct a review into older patients ‘stranded’ in hospital. The review will include assessing the costs and impacts of stranded patients. “It’s blocking the beds we badly need for more critical cases,” Mookhey said.

“We need to find a better way to help patients who are becoming stranded, while they wait to get the Commonwealth aged care support they need,” Mookhey added. “While this is a national problem, we cannot simply wait for the federal response.”

The number of patients in a NSW public hospital, ready to be discharged, but unable to leave because they are unable to obtain a Commonwealth aged care placement, rose from 300 in December 2023 to 776 in 2025, the NSW Treasurer and Minister for Health said in a joint statement.

The number of days stranded in a hospital bed for these patients has also escalated, they said, from 11,943 in December 2023 to 44,487 in 2025. To understand what can be done for patients to receive the most appropriate care, inside and outside of hospitals, and to improve access and supply of that care, the statement said that NSW Health will assist the NSW Productivity & Equality Commission and provide NSW Health staff to the review team to help develop robust, evidence-based recommendations.

To help deliver policy and improve outcomes for patients exceeding their estimated date of discharge due to delayed access to aged care and NDIS placements, the national Hospital Discharge Joint Taskforce — co-led by the federal and NSW Governments — will commence alongside the NSW Productivity and Equality Commission review.

“Every day in New South Wales, there is the equivalent of an entire hospital taken offline because people cannot access Commonwealth aged care placements,” NSW Minister for Health Ryan Park said. “Hospitals were not designed for indefinite stays and these people deserve better.”

This review comes after the latest Health Ministers’ Meeting, where, the statement read: “the NSW Government successfully led a push for a national Hospital Discharge Joint Taskforce to address discharge delays in Australia’s public hospital system”.

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