The Missed Opportunity: A National Aged Care Asset Sitting Idle

Over 200,000 emergency department (ED) presentations each year involve residents from aged care homes. Up to half of these may be preventable. The associated costs of these potentially preventable admissions equate to around $312million dollars per year to the health system.

That represents not just system strain, but a missed opportunity. 

Because across Australia today, more than 520 residential aged care homes around 20% of the sector are already equipped with clinical-grade virtual care infrastructure from Visionflex capable of delivering hospital-level assessment at the bedside.

Yet much of this capability remains underutilised.

An aged care system under pressure – with an asset already in place

Over the past three years, the Government funded about $10 million to deploy Visionflex infrastructure into more than 520 residential aged care homes nationwide.

That investment now enables virtual access and capability to roughly 20% of Australia’s aged care residences to deliver hospital level virtual care directly to residents.

This includes primary care and, crucially, semi acute diagnostics such as comprehensive vital signs, ECG, ultrasound, heart and lung assessments with multi filter stethoscopes, ENT imaging, wound and skin assessment, and more.

The potential to transform care delivery and reduce emergency department (ED) presentations is substantial yet is being largely underutilised outside a few highly engaged aged care providers, PHNs and GP clusters.

With ease, we can unlock a low cost, scalable solution to deliver hospital level care into 20% of aged care homes nationally.

This is not a technology problem

• We have scale and reach into 520+ homes which are already fitted with Visionflex infrastructure, representing roughly 20% of Australia’s residential aged care sector.
• We have the capacity to deliver real time clinical access to semi acute diagnostics and virtual ED level support inside residents’ homes which could avert unnecessary ED transfers and hospitalisations.
• The Federal Government has made a significant infrastructure investment and the ongoing cost of deploying and operating virtual care is comparatively low, especially when spread across a large network of homes.
• The COVID-19 era accelerated virtual care adoption across states and territories, creating a fragmented but ripe landscape for scalable, state and nationwide implementation.

The infrastructure exists.
The clinical capability exists.
The opportunity is not technical, it is structural.

Fragmentation in the aged care sector exists across:

• Federal and state funding models
• PHNs and local commissioning
• Workforce capability and training
• Clinical governance and integration

And it’s the combination of all these factors that prevents this investment from being fully realised.

What needs to happen next?

1. Leverage the existing Visionflex footprint to standardise hospital‑level virtual care pathways across the 520+ aged care homes, prioritising regions with the strongest ongoing engagement and need.
2. Partner with State based virtual health services to implement consistent clinical governance frameworks, escalation protocols, and data sharing agreements between aged care providers, PHNs, and the States Virtual Health Services.
3. Align GP and nursing skills to effectively utilise remote diagnostics including triage, ECG interpretation, ultrasound, wound assessment, through accelerated training and real-time telehealth support.
4. Create seamless referrals to virtual ED services or rapid on‑site clinician response when remote assessment indicates higher acuity. Use the current infrastructure to unlock opportunities to deliver care from the virtual services into the patients’ homes.
5. Establish metrics for ED avoidance, hospital admission reductions, resident outcomes, and cost savings to demonstrate return on investment.

This is a high potential, low risk opportunity to reframe how residential aged care is supported nationwide via already implemented State-based virtual services with Federal-funded infrastructure.  

The infrastructure for hospital level virtual care in 20% of Australia’s residential aged care homes already exists.

The opportunity is not technical its strategic and political.

The question is not whether we can build it. It is whether we are willing to use it.

Visionflex solutions

With obligation-free discovery calls and product demonstrations available, embedding a class-leading virtual care solution into your healthcare program has never been simpler or easier to access.

The team at Visionflex are the industry experts that will support you and your team through all stages from research, development, implementation and enablement.