Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, , 6:57:51 to 7:01:05
A comparison of profitability data between the department and external reports like Stuart Brown. Officials clarify that roughly 62% of residential providers are profitable, noting differences in data sets and the weighting of not-for-profit providers.
Topics: Government spending, Health
Speakers: Senator The Hon Anne Ruston, Mr Daen Dorazio, Mr Luke Mansfield
No, okay. Um how many residential age care homes are operating at a loss according to the department's own latest financial data?
So the latest um data um which you would have seen released uh in the last few days.
Um you've released an awful lot of data in the last few days, and you'll excuse me for not having read all 55,000 pages of it.
Yeah, it shows that um in residential care, it's and my colleague, Mr. Mansfield may just come to the table and verify this, but uh my understanding is that 62 per cent are profit uh were profitable in the um in the fourth quarter of 25-26%. Mr. Mertzfield.
I think that's accurate. 62 per cent, according to the department's data, 62 per cent were operating profitably. So that means 38% were Ipso facto not operating profitly. Um Stuart Brown's findings for the same period said that 62% of homes were operating at a loss. So um it's interesting that the sector itself now maybe you've used a different data set.
Um that is correct, Senator, they are different, they're quite different data sets.
Okay, so um are they is their data set not as extended extensive as you will.
So my understanding is that the Stuart Brown's data set represents roughly 25% of the sector. And within that, roughly 90% of Stuart Brown's data set are not for profits. So it's not necessarily surprising that a data set that's more heavily weighted than the sector average towards not for profit does show lower profitability.
We're not talking lower profitability, we're talking operating a loss. There are quite that's quite a different thing.
Senator 62.8% of providers in res residential providers recorded a positive net um profit before tax position in 25 26.
Net profit before tax.
Yes, and 75.8 um per cent of Of for-profit providers, so subset reported a positive net profit before tax position.
And I'm assuming you'd be able to provide the information in terms of what that profitability was at the ME BT stage?
Pardon, sorry.
You'll be able to provide what the percentage of that profitability was like obviously there's going to be a range here, some are going to be more profitable than others, but I mean a profitability of you know 62.8%, and you know they've got a you know an ER of 1.1%, one would hardly suggest that they're exactly profitable. So do you have a do you have a sort of like a bell curve that can demonstrate where they're the bell curve, Senator?
There is information in the quarterly report that goes to the net profit before tax, the margins and other information for both the residential care sector and uh also for home care.
Are you tracking that over time?
Yes, so there's quarterly data that's produced and is published on the department's website.