By Dana Daniel
Hundreds of aged care providers will seek exemptions to the Albanese government’s 24/7 nurse mandate as they struggle to fill shifts amid chronic staff shortages.
Aged Care Minister Anika Wells on Wednesday introduced a bill into parliament containing the government’s key election promise to require all aged care homes to have a registered nurse on site 24 hours a day from next July.
Aged Care Minister Anika Wells says the government’s reforms will deliver more care, but providers say they will struggle to meet staffing mandates.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
“This bill puts nurses back in nursing homes [and] ensures more carers have more time to care,” Wells told the chamber.
But the Aged Care Amendment (Implementing Care Reform) Bill 2022 says providers will be able to get an exemption from the requirement, without giving details of who will be exempt.
Aged & Community Care Providers Association interim chief executive Paul Sadler said one in five providers, operating about 500 aged care homes, would be unable to put a registered nurse on shift overnight, and weekends would also be a challenge.
“With our current crisis in terms of staff availability generally and nursing in particular, we will need some exemptions in place,” Sadler said.
The homes that would struggle most were smaller metropolitan facilities and those in regional and rural areas, he said.
Sadler said the pandemic had made staff shortages worse because so many nurses were off sick.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced Labor’s policy in his budget reply speech in March – implementing a key royal commission recommendation a year early – but admitted during the election campaign that providers experiencing staff shortages would have to be given “flexibility”.
The government will detail the conditions under which 24/7 nurse exemptions will be granted in Quality of Care Principles to be outlined in subordinate legislation to be tabled after consultation with the sector.
Legislation passed in the federal parliament on Wednesday will set up a new funding model for the sector from October 2022 and mandate a minimum 200 care minutes per resident each day from October 2023, including 40 minutes with a registered nurse.
The bill — which was almost identical to one the former Coalition failed to legislate before the election while also setting up a star rating system for aged care — passed with bipartisan support.
Labor has promised a further $2.5 billion to increase minimum care minutes to 215 per day, including 44 minutes with a registered nurse, from October 2024.
Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation Secretary Annie Butler said while the government’s reforms “will take some time”, they marked “the first real step towards actually fixing the aged care sector” through national safe staffing laws after years of campaigning by the union.
“The implementation of 24-hour [registered nurse] presence, and mandated minimum staff time in law, acts on one of the key recommendations of the royal commission and addresses the chronic understaffing in the aged care sector,” Butler said.
Wells said the government’s aged care reforms would deliver on the promise she made in her first speech three years ago to be “a good ancestor ... leaving places better than we found them”.
“We have the opportunity and the responsibility to make the lives [of] our oldest Australians to be lives lived with care,” she said. “People deserve to be treated properly.”
Wells said the government remained committed to lifting aged care workers’ wages and would make its supporting submission to the union case in the Fair Work Commission by August 8.
The aged care reform bill also caps the administration fees that home care providers can charge and imposes new reporting requirements, although these measures will also be subject to further detail through subordinate legislation.
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