The Expected Length of Stay At Aged Care Facilities in Australia: Current and Future

This paper analyzes the hazard functions of exiting from an aged care facility in Australia. Using a comprehensive dataset ranging over 2008--2018, we find that those functions are heterogeneous across the age, sex and year-of-leaving. The modelling results lead to in-sample estimated expected length of stay (LOS) for residents differed by age (in general, longer for older groups) and sex (longer for females). The estimated LOS declines gradually from 2008 to 2014 and then steadily increase afterwards for all heterogeneous age and sex groups. Out-of-sample predictions up to 2100 suggest that the longest LOS belongs to females aged 100 and older, with the estimated/predicted LOS increasing from 58.6 months in 2018 to 68.9 months in 2100. Relative uncertainty measures are also provided. Those results can be used to explore the nature of and aspects to improve service quality of Australian aged care facilities for policy makers.