Aged-care watchdog Janet Anderson to target homes at risk

New aged-care ­enforcer Janet Anderson says she will target providers that show a pattern of abuses and compliance breaches.

Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission head Janet Anderson. Picture: Britta Campion

The nation’s new aged-care ­enforcer, Janet Anderson, has said she will target providers that show a pattern of abuses and compliance breaches and consider forcing them to publish staffing ratios.

In her first major interview since becoming the head of the $300 million Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, Ms Anderson said she would not accept funding cuts as an excuse for harm and had the powers to establish the agency as “a fully fledged regulator”.

Her comments come weeks before the start of royal commission hearings into the sector in Adelaide.

The commissioner outlined a blueprint for handling complaints and compliance failures that included overhauling accreditation standards for the first time in two decades, as the sector struggles with rising costs and falling subsidies and prepares for the blowtorch of the royal commission.

When asked whether funding cuts had reduced care quality, Ms Anderson said: “There are no compromises in quality and ­safety: that is where I must start that answer. If someone were to say to me, ‘We would have done it better if it weren’t for …’

“I stop listening at ‘We would have done it better’ because they should have done it better.

“I am aware of a very active conversation in relation to the fin­ancing of the aged-care sector and I know there are a range of different views expressed about that.

“I am also aware that the government is very attentive to those views and is looking very closely at the instrument and alternate modes of funding. I will not be distracted by that.”

As treasurer in 2016, Scott Morrison froze indexation and changed the scoring matrix of the Aged Care Funding Instrument to save $1.2 billion to the budget ­bottom line.

The ACFI is the basic subsidy provided by taxpayers to nursing home operators. Between July 2016 and June last year, it grew nationally by 5c per resident a day while care costs have risen by 4.3 per cent in just the past year.

Further, the cost of providing everyday living services, as distinct from care, now exceeds revenue by almost $8 per bed a day on average, according to industry accountants Stewart Brown.

The Prime Minister called a royal commission into aged-care quality and safety weeks after ­ascending to the Liberal leadership. He said he was convinced after being briefed that the number of serious risk notices given to aged-care providers had jumped by 170 per cent in the past year and ­significant non-compliance in the sector had leapt 292 per cent.

More services have been added to the sanctions and noncompliance list since then.

Bupa Aged Care Australia has almost one-seventh of all its nursing homes currently on a list of sanctions and non-compliance held by the federal government: five in NSW and two each in the ACT and Victoria.

Weeks before Christmas, Bupa Eden had its commonwealth subsidies for new residents cancelled for six months after it failed 26 of 44 standards, which represented an “immediate and severe risk to the health, safety and wellbeing of care recipients”.

“There were critical deficiencies at the service contributing to serious and detrimental failings in several areas including … clinical care, medication management (and) behaviour management” the sanction notice says.

A Bupa spokeswoman said the company was “very sorry this has happened. We have accepted the findings of the (Health) Department and will not shy away from the responsibility that comes with fixing this situation and improving the standard of care.”

While not referring specifically to Bupa, Ms Anderson said she would go after providers where such patterns of failure become apparent.

“If a single provider or a provider of more than one nursing home emerges as a provider with a particular risk profile, where we might be starting to see areas of noncompliance, then I will absolutely be having conversations with them,” Ms Anderson said.

“It doesn’t matter what size they are, whether they are ­commercial or non-profit, all providers are in scope.”

Unions and some parts of the sector have been calling for mandatory minimum staff ratios similar to childcare.

Although careful about endorsing staff ratios in residential homes, Ms Anderson said her push to publish more data previously kept secret could include staffing levels.

“That goes also to the question of the amount of information I will choose to publish and make generally available (so) consumers, and the people who love them, can make informed decisions about entry into aged care but also once they are there,” she said. Although Ms Anderson has strengthened powers, including surprise reaccreditation audits and more staff, she says her goal is to fix problems before they become official.