Projections of national demand and bed capacity requirements for older people’s care in Ireland, 2022–2040: Based on the Hippocrates model

Life expectancy rates have increased substantially in Ireland in recent years, driven mainly by reductions in mortality rates at older ages. Accordingly, Ireland has seen large increases in its older population, and along with this increasing demand for health and social care services, particularly those aimed at the older population such as long-term residential care (LTRC) and home support. Due to the projected increase in the older population in the future, planning health and social care capacity is vital to ensure the health system is in a position to meet the care needs of this segment of the population. 

Over the past ten years, as part of the Department of Health/Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) Research Programme in Healthcare Reform, the ESRI developed the Hippocrates projection model. Previous analyses have applied Hippocrates to provide medium-term projections of healthcare demand, bed capacity, expenditure and workforce requirements. This recent work, commissioned under the programme, has used the model to provide up-to-date projections for three service areas – public acute hospitals, general practice and older people’s services to 2040. Analyses in this report use the Hippocrates model to update baseline estimates of home support hours and LTRC beds in 2022, and to project demand and capacity for these services to 2040. 

Building on the existing Hippocrates modelling framework, the broad objectives of this report are to: 

• provide updated baseline profiles for LTRC bed capacity and home support hours among older people (aged 65 years and over) incorporating new population estimates based on Census 2022; and 

• project LTRC bed capacity and home support hour requirements to 2040