Rural care facilities could break under blanket rules

Gunther Village's Vicki Boyd and Colleen Maddern made the most of a meeting with the Minister of Aged Care over a breakfast held at Hervey Bay on Wednesday.

IMPORTANT TALK: Gunther Village Facility Manager Vicki Boyd and Care Manager Colleen Maddern met with the Minister for Aged Care Ken Wyatt over a breakfast held at Hervey Bay on Wednesday, October 31.

PROVIDING quality aged care in a rural community is a big responsibility, and it's made even harder when blanket regulations designed for metropolitan areas are applied.

That's what Gunther Village aged care facility manager Vicki Boyd is concerned about as a Royal Commission into aged care quality and safety is carried out across the country.

But alongside the staff at Gunther Village, she is doing everything she can to make rural facilities heard.

Mrs Boyd and Gunther Village's care manager Colleen Maddern made the most of a meeting with the Minister for Aged Care Ken Wyatt over a breakfast held at Hervey Bay on Wednesday.

"It was a really good opportunity to speak to the minister about Gunther Village and how we're trying to stay afloat.”

"We're unique - at the moment we have a drought, people don't have money, we don't get the refundable accommodation deposits that they do in cities, and 60 per cent of this region has a low socio-economic background so it's important that the big guys know what is happening in the rural areas,” she said.

Because Gunther Village is funded by the Federal Government and not associated with Queensland Health, they do not receive the same funding that multi-purpose health services do.

A point Mrs Boyd raised with the minister, was that rural facilities face unique problems to those in urban areas and blanket policies shouldn't be applied to all.

"The minister spoke a lot on how he feels about the issues faced by rural aged care facilities and he was concerned about losing them and therefore the community's history,” she said.

"He was acutely aware that aged care facilities in rural areas need extra support, how it costs for us to have registered staff and how many we need.

Aged care facilities have been put in a negative light recently, after the Queensland Nurses Union conducted surprise visits across the state and found living conditions were not up to standard.

The union is pushing for carer to patient ratios to be implemented in aged care homes, however, Mrs Boyd said it's irrational to implement the same ratio standards to rural facilities as they would to urban ones.

"The minister agreed having ratios is not appropriate for facilities like us who struggle and have to pay extra as it is to get staff to work in Gayndah, extra for infrastructure, and extra for freight and food,” she said.

"We do actually have a very good staff ratio here at one staff to every seven residents, it's quite high, but you also need to consider whether residents are high care or low care.

"I care so much about the care we give our residents, yet we see so much negative reporting in aged care, well that's not every facility in Australia.”

Mrs Maddern said the biggest issue with implementing staffing ratios is the number of registered nurses they would need to recruit.

"In more metropolitan areas they like a registered nurse on every shift and for rural areas that would close a facility down because we just don't have that many registered staff out in these little areas,” she said.

"We also talked to the minister about how much more money we would need, in contrast with metropolitan areas, for us to stay viable.

"He was talking about a two-prong approach in aged care, rural and metropolitan, because you can't treat the two areas the same.”

Mrs Boyd said everything would hang on the findings of the Royal Commission's interim report, which is to be provided by October 31, 2019, and its final report no later than April 30, 2020.

Mrs Boyd said although it would be a struggle, Gunther Village is committed to staying afloat through any adversities they may face resulting from new regulations.