This page is updated with the latest available data at 30 June 2019. You can download data directly from the visualisations by clicking in the graph area and using the 'download' menu.
When people leave an aged care service (residential or home care), we refer to this as an ‘exit’ and information on their reasons for leaving and how long they were in care are captured. This section reports on exits from residential care and home care.
In 2018–19: There were almost 203,000 exits from residential aged care, home care and transition care.
- The majority of exits were people leaving respite residential aged care (more than 83,000), followed by permanent residential aged care (more than 68,100), home care (almost 27,700), and transition care (over 24,000).
- On average, people spent around 2 years 6 months in permanent residential aged care, around 1 month (26 days) in respite care and just over 2 years in home care.
- Most (83%) exits from permanent residential care were due to death, compared with 32% from home care.
- Just over half (57%) of people who left home care entered residential care, and just under 10% of people who left permanent residential care, moved to a different facility.
Why do people leave aged care?
People leave an aged care service for a number of reasons, including moving to another service for the same or a different program type, returning to the community, or death. Every time a client leaves care (excluding short periods of leave, such as for family visits or hospital stays) they are counted as ‘exits’.
The time that people spend in an aged care service and their reasons for leaving vary by program type, but can be influenced by factors such as age, sex and care needs. Sometimes people leave an aged care service, but return later in the year or after many years.
A pie chart shows exits from permanent residential care by discharge reason and year. Around 74% exits were due to death in 2009–10, rising to around 83% by 2018–19. The chart also shows that at the same time, exits due to moves to other residential care decreased from 17% to 9%.
Explore more about the reasons people leave residential aged care or home care, their average length of stay in care, and how exits vary by program type.