Profiting from the aged a national disgrace

Out of sight, out of mind, too many of our elderly Australians are left to the mercies of money-hungry aged care operators, writes Natasha Bita.

Childcare centres can’t decide how many staff they need to care for kids, so why should aged care homes be allowed to operate nursing homes without any nurses?

Child care and aged care both receive billions of dollars a year in taxpayer funding.

But children are better protected, with government rules for the numbers and qualifications of carers.

Our elderly – out of sight, out of mind – are too often left to the mercies of money-hungry aged care operators that prioritise profit over kindness and quality care.

If childcare centres, or indeed animal shelters, were allowed to operate in the inhumane way that too many nursing homes do, disgusted Australians would be marching in the streets demanding change.

Terry Reeves was strapped into his wheelchair and allegedly chemically restrained with antipsychotic drugs while at Garden View aged care home in Merrylands.

The Royal Commission into aged care report makes depressing and distressing reading, with tales of elderly Australians starving to death or left to suffer in pain with maggot-infested wounds.

The way we care for our elderly in this country – our fellow Australians who went to war and worked hard without complaint to give us our freedoms and high living standards – is a national disgrace.

Yet after two years of hearings, 10,000 public submissions and a report more than 1700 pages long, the Royal Commission has failed to give the Federal Government a clear path to fixing what it describes as a “cruel and shameful’’ aged care system.

The two commissioners clashed over many of the 148 recommendations, including the best way to fund and administer aged care.

But they did agree on the need for more staff, with better training, and to have at least one nurse on site at all times.

It’s time to stop thinking of aged care as a “retirement village’’ and to integrate it with our publicly-funded and universal system of health care.

Anna Ng fronted the Royal Commission with her evidence of poor care provided to her mother, which contributed to her death. Picture: Aged Care Royal Commission

Half the residents of nursing homes have dementia, and need a medicalised model of care instead of being locked in rooms, doped with sedatives or tied to chairs to keep them calm and quiet.

Aged care homes need to become more like hospitals, with well-trained and caring staff who can provide a good quality of life for Australians in their twilight years, with compassionate and pain-free palliative care as they die.

This will require much more money from taxpayers – perhaps double the existing $20 billion a year, and possibly through another increase to the Medicare levy, as was used to pay for the National Disability Support Scheme (NDIS).

But administrative incompetence and industry profiteering has to stop.

Taxpayer money needs to be spent on better care, by trained staff earning decent wages, instead of being wasted on impotent regulators and greedy operators who pay their executives more than the Prime Minister.

Aged care “charities’’ and Church-run facilities – who can hide behind not-for-profit confidentiality – must be held to account for how they spend their money, and be forced to publish their executive salaries and marketing overheads.

We can’t continue to fund a system where many elderly Australians would rather die than suffer a lonely life and painful death in a nursing home.

Originally published as Profiting from the aged a national disgrace