65% of NZ villages are now ‘integrated’, meaning they offer residential aged care on site.
In the past five years the only new aged care beds in NZ have been built in retirement villages. That is right; no stand alone care facilities have been built anywhere in the country because the economics of government funding, we were told, just do not stack up.
This means the village model must be subsidising the care model, by cross subsidising infrastructure, sales and marketing and administration.
Using the Ryman’s model, the ratio of beds to retirement units is approximately 40 beds to 60 retirement units ratio in a village
Guy Eady of Oceania Group informed the conference that they had for the first time built a care facility as the first stage of a new greenfield integrated village development and they had been very nervous. The investment was NZ$30M for 60 beds. While successful, it was not as rapidly taken up as a fully integrated village in presales.
Typically when a new integrated village opens it soaks care residents up from the local region, often causing older, local care facilities to close.