The Federal Government has no way to track how many homes aged care staff work at
Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck is expected to announce more money and a number of changes to the sector after it was revealed the federal government still had no oversight over how many workers were still moving between nursing homes.
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Changes will be made to the aged care workforce retention bonus payment scheme by the federal government today.
Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck is expected to announce more money for the sector as a whole and changes to the retention scheme designed to stop workers moving between facilities.
It comes after the Herald Sun revealed the federal government still had no oversight over how many workers were still moving between nursing homes more than a month after it was identified as a major infection issue.
Staff employed at multiple facilities are understood to have spread the virus between aged-care homes, where hundreds of elderly people have perished from COVID-19.
On Sunday, nine people were added to the state’s aged-care virus death toll.
It comes after damning 2018 report into the aged-care workforce recommended a national database of workers — a resource the federal Opposition said could have been used to monitor staff movement during the pandemic.
Federal and state aged-care and health ministers last month agreed action was needed to stop the movement of staff between facilities.
“More needs to be done to help aged-care providers minimise the risk of transmission within and across facilities,” Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said in July.
“This includes specific support to reduce the need for aged-care workers to provide care across multiple aged-care facilities.”
More than a month later, Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck on Sunday confirmed the federal government did not collect workforce movement data and said it was up to aged-care providers to manage.
“Aged-care providers are responsible for managing their workforce, including complying with any jurisdiction public health orders, or, as is the case in Victoria, to adhere to guidance developed by industry and unions about workers working at a single site,” Senator Colbeck said.
“The Department of Health does not collect data about individual workers or where workers are employed.”
He said the federal government was working with state officials to provide funding to ensure workers and providers were not disadvantaged as a result of efforts to get people not to move between facilities.
Opposition ageing spokeswoman Julie Collins called for the federal government to gain oversight of the issue so it could see if assistance was making a difference.
“The Morrison government talked a big game about stopping aged-care employees working across different sites but now we know they don’t even know if this is still happening,” Ms Collins said.
On Sunday there were 1277 active coronavirus cases in aged-care homes across the state.
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