CCTV aged-care trial that cost nearly $1m scrapped after generating thousands of false alerts

An aged-care CCTV trial set up by the Liberals – and which cost nearly $1m – has been dumped after it generated so many false alerts staff missed actual resident falls.

A 12-month CCTV monitoring trial for the safety of aged-care residents established by the former state government cost nearly $1m and generated more than 12,000 false alerts, according to an independent review.

The review, which was instituted to be a deterrent to abusive aged care workers, revealed the trial generated thousands of alerts across two sites through “sensitive” artificial intelligence surveillance technology.

It created so many false alerts staff were unable to respond to all of them and missed occasions when the technology actually worked and notified staff of a true fall.

Health Minister Chris Picton said taxpayer dollars were spent on a “botched” program.

“The previous Liberal government, the previous minister, have a lot of explaining to do about how we got to this point where we bought in a system that didn’t work that made the care worse, and we spent $850,000 of taxpayers money,” he said.

“The system couldn’t differentiate between that fall of a resident or a staff kneeling to provide the care that they are appropriately responding to.

Health Minister Chris Picton. NCA NewsWire / David Mariuz

“There were many warnings from advocates, that the system wasn’t right and it wasn’t going to make an impact.”

The trials were prompted after Noleen Hausler hid a camera in her father’s room which caught a carer assaulting him at the Mitcham Residential Care Facility in 2015.

The video resulted in the carer being convicted and sparked a national debate on monitoring equipment in aged care facilities.

Mr Picton said he would start community consultation after scrapping the model, and report to the federal government on the findings.

“We want to work with advocates, work with key community sectors, looking at the broad range of technologies that could be used in aged care and make sure that we get systems across aged care that work appropriately and aren’t going to make the situation worse with what we saw here,” Mr Picton said.

“There is important work that we need to do families not just on the technology, but on privacy on how this will impact upon those residents in their homes.”

The report revealed that during the trial, staff were not able to respond to every alert – which resulted in them missing at least one true alert of a resident fall.

“We can’t have a situation where we’re actually making staff’s job harder by using technology,” Mr Picton said.

“It’s got to be about making staffs jobs easier and making residents lives better.

“We’re starting that consultation to see where we end up in terms of now considering where we go into the future.

“It may well be that there are other technologies that could be used that we could roll out both in private and community aged-care providers and within SA Health sites that don’t need another trial.”

Opposition ageing spokeswoman Penny Pratt said the Liberals wouldn’t be lectured by Labor “on a mess of their making”.

“We all remember the horrors of Oakden and Labor’s failure to act quickly,” Ms Pratt said.

“That’s why the former Liberal government implemented an Australian-first CCTV trial in two aged-care facilities to help protect patients.

“We all know there can be limitations with any technology and as a result some patients were over-attended to which is still better than Labor’s alternative of doing nothing.

“It’s shocking Chris Picton doesn’t want to utilise technology in aged-care facilities to keep people safe.”