However, Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora denied the move, saying it wanted to ensure "older New Zealanders got the right care in the right settings".
Aged Care Association chief executive Tracey Martin said last month they became aware Te Whatu Ora was designing a new care delivery model "behind closed doors" with no input from the sector.
She said in a statement the Ageing Well Team had been instructed to save 200,000 bed nights per year in the hospitals and a paper about the matter would be going before Cabinet in October.
"To date, our offers to co-design have been ignored or dismissed."
Presbyterian Support Southland chief executive Matt Russell said the government needed to respond to the credible reports and data which clearly showed the aged care sector was in crisis.
He was concerned cost savings were taking precedence over need.
Under-funding aged care providers would further marginalise and place more pressure on home-based care providers, GPs and hospital services who were already struggling with constrained resourcing.
"When you squeeze one part of the network it impacts on other parts of the health system.
"A more robust dataset identifying regional challenges and differences would be useful in terms of enabling each region to better prepare and ‘right-size’ for the future."
Mr Russell believed a clear plan for the future was urgently required to address a lack of funding and inadequate resourcing.
The entire health system would benefit from a more integrated approach where the patient journey was prioritised, resources were used efficiently and duplication removed, he said.
This had been a focus of Presbyterian Support Southland, as less than six months after putting out a call for help, it announced this week $330,583 had been raised to support its new D6 dementia unit at Invercargill’s Peacehaven Village.
The $386,000 project involves creating six additional bedrooms by repurposing space within the existing building footprint.
The project is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
Age Concern Southland manager Janette Turner said she was concerned by the lack of dementia beds available in the region and how that was going to affect those who needed them.
"There’s not enough dementia beds in Southland — we’ve got an extreme shortage," she said.
Alzheimers New Zealand chief executive Catherine Hall said more investment was needed in the aged care sector — not less.
Further reductions to aged care services were "soul destroying", she said
"But somehow New Zealand has found itself caught very short when it comes to providing equitable healthcare and support to our older people who have worked and paid taxes all their lives, only to be let down by the people who should have known much better."
Health New Zealand Ageing Well director Andy Inder told the Southland Express it was incorrect it would be reducing aged care bed nights.
"We do want a system that supports older people, based on their needs and allows them to be cared for in the appropriate setting of their choice."
It was reviewing aged care services and engaging with the sector to ensure any future operating model would work to meet current and future needs, he said.
"We are not in a design phase as yet. That will come once we know an investment pathway has been secured."
He wanted to reassure people it was focused on the health needs of the ageing population and ensured older people would be appropriately cared for in a timely fashion.
As of September 16, there were 3068 Southern residents in aged residential care with 103 vacant beds in different care levels — but all psychogeriatric beds were full, with 103 current vacancies for rest home, dementia, and hospital level beds, Mr Inder said.
Health New Zealand hoped additional beds would be available by January 2026.
- By Toni McDonald
