Elderly dying before home-care aid arrives
A further 10,000 home-care places being rolled out early across the aged-care system are mostly lower level support.
A further 10,000 home-care places being rolled out early across the aged-care system are mostly lower-level support packages that will have little effect on a long waiting list on which elderly Australians have died before they receive help, a Senate estimates hearing has heard.
Department of Health secretary Glenys Beauchamp could not tell the hearing yesterday if the number of people waiting for their assessed support package would rise from the 127,000 currently on the list but said she expected the average waiting time for high-level support, currently more than a year, to “come down by some months” in June.
The committee also heard the federal government had an issue policing the way funds were used in the multi-billion-dollar segment of the aged-care portfolio and only recently ran a “pilot” trial to boost compliance.
“The department has looked into 19 approved providers who voluntarily gave us access to their information,” first assistant secretary Maria Jolly said.
“The findings of the pilot (are) there is more work to do around financial compliance. It did not find any instances in the 19 providers of evidence of practices you would want to take regulatory action on. But there are things where you would want to tighten up and improve the way things are done.”
The home-care program in its modern form has been in existence since 2015, with changes in early 2017 that allowed funding to be given direct to consumers.
New estimates about the value of funds not spent by consumers last year were $400 million, up from $329m the year before, with nothing stopping providers making millions in interest from the idle money.
In often fiery exchanges, Coalition senator Nigel Scullion argued with Labor’s Murray Watt over the depth of the crisis in aged care.
“I don’t agree with your characterisation we’ve got a real problem,” Senator Scullion said.
The Australian was yesterday told the story of an elderly man who suffered a stroke in March 2017. He was approved for the highest-level home-care package but died in late December without receiving any support.
His family had been told a level-two package would have become available last month.
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