Coronavirus: Anglicare ‘too slow to adapt’ as crisis struck

Anglicare Sydney failed to adapt fast enough to the unfolding coronavirus outbreak at its Newmarch House nursing home.

The entrance to Newmarch House in Sydney’s west. Picture: AAP

Anglicare Sydney failed to adapt fast enough to the unfolding coronavirus outbreak at its Newmarch House nursing home that left 17 residents dead, the aged-care standards regulator said.

In evidence to a Senate committee examining the COVID-19 pandemic, Aged Care Quality and Safety Commissioner Janet ­Anderson said Anglicare Sydney “was not as well placed as we ­needed them to be to make right, well-informed decisions and then see that through to immediate ­implementation”.

“The gaps were too large,” she said. “We weren’t getting the ­responsiveness that we expected from an aged-care service managing an outbreak.”

She said nursing home operators needed to forsake “business as usual” for an emergency setting in an outbreak situation, including quickly isolating residents, ensuring potentially compromised staff were isolated at home, finding new staff and kitting them up in personal protective equipment as well as training them to use it properly.

“It was not a compellingly good example of outbreak management,” Ms Anderson said.

The committee heard Australia had performed relatively well by world standards over the course of the pandemic in protecting nursing home residents from the virus.

Federal Health Department acting secretary Caroline Edwards said 29 per cent of Australia’s coronavirus deaths had occurred in aged-care homes, compared to 60 per cent in Norway and 51 per cent in France.

But Newmarch House had a poorer outcome than many other Australian nursing homes in part, Ms Anderson said, because of the initial exposure of staff and residents to “an individual who, unwittingly, was infectious while working at the services”.

Within six days infected numbers rose from one resident and one staff member to 25 residents and 14 staff.

The committee also heard ­Anglicare Sydney waited six days before accepting an offer of commonwealth-provided health workers from private company Aspen Medical. Aged-care department deputy secretary Michael Lye said the offer was made on April 14 and accepted on April 20.

Mr Lye said his department in recent weeks had to counsel aged-care operators about the impact coronavirus would have on staffing numbers. “Newmarch was no different to other organisations who say: ‘we think we’ll be OK’, then they haven’t been,” he said.

Mr Lye said Anglicare Sydney had “some degree of difficulty from the organisation in terms of responding to requests to understand what they required in terms of PPE”. “The department would say the organisation may not have been sure what (PPE) they did actually have,” Mr Lye told senator Kristina Keneally after she raised comments made by Anglicare Sydney regarding the difficulty of securing protective gear.