Aged-care royal commission: most providers fail to report abuse
More than half of all aged-care providers have missed a deadline to provide a list of incidents of abuse and neglect.
More than half of all aged-care providers have missed a deadline by the royal commission to provide a list of all incidents of abuse and neglect going back five years despite clear warnings they will face “careful scrutiny” if they fail to comply.
As the first witness hearing of the aged-care inquiry began in Adelaide yesterday, commissioners Richard Tracey and Lynelle Briggs heard evidence about a broken funding model for the sector that has been doctored by successive governments and compromised the quality of care.
But the opening testimony came from Barbara and Clive Spriggs, the wife and son of Oakden nursing home resident Robert “Bob” Spriggs, who died in June 2016 with 10 times the dose of the antipsychotic drug Seroquel in his system and bruising across his body due to physical restraints. His room was like a prison, Ms Spriggs told the inquiry, and she lamented the fact nobody saw what she did when she first encountered the facility.
“I cannot believe to this day that we had no choice but to put Bob there. I can’t believe that nobody else could pick up how bad that place was,” she said.
“I think about those who hurt Bob and I wonder whether they — and I wonder whether they are now employed somewhere else. I wonder if their employers know about their previous conduct.”
The “widespread” use of antipsychotics as a “patient management device” in lieu of overworked staff spending time and energy on other behavioural interventions will be a key focus of the commission, but the inquiry heard those issues might be a mask for deeper problems.
“Many of those witnesses will tell you that the current funding arrangements are inadequate for the provision of care that meets community expectations,” senior counsel assisting Peter Gray QC said yesterday.
This has been one explanation offered for the failure of about 1100 aged-care providers to meet a deadline for detailed information on abuse and neglect to be handed to the royal commission. Many banks and financial institutions were asked to perform a similar exercise when that industry was the subject of a royal commission, and all bar one complied.
The largest providers, all eight members of the Aged Care Guild including three listed companies, met the deadline for the request, however.
Council on the Ageing chief executive Ian Yates also told the commission that 40 per cent of home-care providers had failed to publish transparent pricing and service information on the government’s aged-care portal. That deadline was November 30 last year. “So it’s a bit like answers to the (royal) commission’s questionnaire. I think there needs to be a bit of a spotlight on why people are not doing that,” Mr Yates said.
Freedom of Information documents obtained by The Australian last week revealed $2 billion in funding reductions from the key Aged Care Funding Instrument in late 2015 and early the next year caused significant pressure in a sector where care costs have been rising rapidly, especially due to wages.
On Sunday, Scott Morrison announced $662 million in extra funding for both residential and home care — $282m to bring forward 10,000 home-care packages to help combat a massive waiting list and $320m for residential aged care, but Mr Yates said this would scarcely touch the sides of what needed to be done.
“It’s been a bit of a characteristic of every new funding instrument over some decades that governments give the instructions to the designers of it that it’s to be cost neutral,” he said.
“So no one’s ever sat back and actually said, what are the components of good aged care and what are they going to cost?”
The average wait time for home-care support was 12 months, he said, and the Department of Health had no idea how many new packages were needed to reduce that to three months, which was still inappropriate for “modern Australia”.
Hearings continue today.
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