When the aged care royal commission was announced last year, one key concept failed to rate a mention, writes aged care specialist Professor Joseph Ibrahim of Monash University in Melbourne.

Neither Prime Minister Scott Morrison nor Minister for Health Greg Hunt made reference to ‘healthcare’, a notion that was also absent from the inquiry’s terms of reference.

“The uncoupling of healthcare from aged care is a worrying trend as the two are inextricably intertwined,” Professor Ibrahim writes in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Healthcare should be one of the core roles of residential aged care facilities, yet providers are increasingly moving away from a medically dominant model, says Professor Ibrahim, head of the Health Law and Ageing Unit at the university’s Department of Forensic Medicine.