Submission to Royal Commission

The following link points to the substantive comments I made in a recent submission to the Royal Commission on Aged Care Quality and Safety.  As a very recently retired Chief Executive in the aged care sector, with some 37 years of continual involvement in aged care related matters, I feel I can comfortably comment upon my own research into matters around minimum levels of staff. Additionally, and importantly how, I believe, the aged care sector has been left in a quandary as to how best to navigate through these troubled times due to funding constraints placed on (at least) the residential aged care.

You can read the entire Submission here.

Nice chatting

Staff Ratios – Royal Commission Research Paper

I have read with interest late last week the very freshly released Royal Commission research paper (1) into aged care staffing requirements, and the shortfall in funding needed to raise the staffing mix and levels to appropriately care for the average residential aged care service consumer.  

The following excerpt from the recommendations paints a picture of what residents, families, advocates, and indeed some providers have been saying for some time – the level of service provision (staffing) in residential aged care in Australia is substandard.  

My conclusion is that because that level of provision is so strongly associated with the operating funding mechanism, the funding mechanism for care is equally substandard:

“more than half (57.6%) of Australian residents receive care in aged care homes that have unacceptable levels of staffing (1 and 2 stars).

To bring staffing levels up to 3 stars would require an increase of 37.3% more staff hours in those facilities. This translates into an additional of 20% in total care staff hours across Australia.

We have not limited our analysis to determining the additional resources required to bring facilities up to an acceptable level. We have also provided an indication of the additional resource requirements that are required to deliver staffing levels consistent with good practice and best practice care.

For all residents to receive at least 4 stars (what we consider good practice) requires an overall increase of 37.2% in total care staffing while 5 stars (best practice) care would require an overall increase of 49.4% in total care staffing.” (2)

As you are probably well aware, I am the CEO of Braemar Presbyterian Care (“Braemar”). To put our services into perspective, since I joined Braemar in March 2017 we have been increasing hours per resident per day to a level that is close to the current national average as recorded by the StewartBrown benchmarking service (3) reporting.  And, as far as is reasonable, we have been improving our subsidy income to match the staffing.  But that recurrent income is not enough.  

According to this research paper, prepared for the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, less than 3 star level of staffing is unacceptable, while a 4 star staffing is good practice, and 5 star staffing is best practice.  Yet 57.6% of residents receive less than 3 star (unacceptable) staffing and only 1.4% receive best practice staffing.

How is this translated into the care of our elders? 

Continue reading “Staff Ratios – Royal Commission Research Paper”

Aged Care Indexation

I am going to assume that most people reading this article will be aware that there is currently a Royal Commission reviewing matters of Quality and Safety in Aged Care.  Among other things, that Commission is inquiring into matters where poor and substandard care have been provided to residents in residential aged care and to care recipients in home and community-based care.

Where there have been findings of substandard care, all providers in the aged care sector should stand resolutely with care recipients and be highly critical of the events that took place to permit such poor care being delivered.  However, without wanting to escape from the responsibility of being a provider of aged care I do want to highlight again the dilemma that providers find themselves in desiring to provide the best care that they can.

One of the threads arising through the Royal Commission Hearings, and for some time prior to the Commission commencing has been a call for a higher staff ratio in care services being delivered.  

Continue reading “Aged Care Indexation”

Funding Cuts: You Decide!

I gathered these thoughts together the day the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety was announced – Sunday 16 September 2018 if my memory serves me well.

This information gathering was in response to the first question of the Prime Minister when making the announcement. The question was around the alleged $1.2 billion cuts to aged care.

Folks, I get it – there have been many cuts from both major sides of our Australian Government over a number of years. And there has been continuing growth in aged care funding based on population related indices etc. But what is galling around these discussions is that the major political parties and the bureaucrats seem unwilling to give simple, transparent responses to questions about these matters.

The recent Federal Senate Community Affairs Committee Hansard from 24 October 2018 make for mind numbing obfuscation around this very issue, with Opposition asking relevant questions, and Government, and Officers, all putting in their opinions, without any direct answer to what should be a simple question. This of course happens regularly at such Committees and is not confined to Aged Care. But this Australian is over it!

Why cannot our elected leaders and paid Officers answer simple questions and be held accountable for the policy and funding interventions they create into valued human service provision? We are projecting tens of thousands shortfall of residential aged care places by 2025 (ref 1) and now some 121,000 not provided with an appropriate level of community care packages short for older Australians already assessed by Government as needing community delivered aged care services. (ref 2).

Of that number, almost 57,000 had no package allocated. A discussion around the residential care funding issues can be found below. Parliamentarians prefer to support their side of the debate, but the Department of Health and Federal Parliamentary Library advice really does paint a helpful and insightful picture into this matter of “funding cuts”.

I shall leave it to you to decide. But if you were to ask me, a return to the residential aged care sector of the $1.2 billion in ACFI funding cuts, along with a requirement for providers to sign off on their direct care staff ratios, would provide, on average, an immediate return to a ratio of 3.2 Hours per Resident per Day (“HRPD”), and begin a move to the 4.3 (or from my research, 4.2) HRPD as soon as possible.

Recent changes:

ACFI subsidy expenditure has been growing more quickly than expected. The Australian Government believes the unexpected growth in claims cannot be explained by an increase in the frailty of residents, although many in the industry disagree. In order to rein in expenditure, around $1.7 billion in savings over four years were included in the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook 2015–16 (MYEFO) and the 2016–17 Budget, to be achieved through changes to ACFI scoring and subsidy indexation. Despite these savings, residential aged care expenditure was still forecast to grow at around 5.1 per cent per annum.” A summary of the impact of these two difficult measures can be found below – https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Librar y/pubs/rp/BudgetReview201617/AgedCare 

“Rein in expenditure.” Is that not just a euphemism for a cut to funding?

You decide. Nice chatting!

References:

Ref 1- Aged Care Financing Authority, ‘Sixth report on the Funding and Financing of the Aged Care Sector’ (Aged Care Financing Authority, 2018), 36.

Ref 2 – Department of Health, ‘HOME CARE PACKAGES PROGRAM Data Report 4th Quarter 2017 – 18’ (Department of Health, 2018), Table 7, 11.

Image: Courtesy Business News.

What to do with a Royal Commission?

I am a person with no clinical or “care” background. But after almost forty years in senior management and executive roles across the spectrum of health and aged care – particularly aged care – I have gathered some insights into the nature of care being provided throughout our care services.

And before I suggest anything more, let me say this – my view is that if the major hospitals around Australia – public and private – were put under the same scrutiny and regulatory framework that residential aged care services are for the quality and accreditation of services that are provided in and through them, we would see hospitals falling into sanctions.

I am of the view that we have an aged care system that is too focused on beating the regulatory compliance framework as opposed to funding and providing appropriate levels of care and support to all clients.

On the one hand I am an incredibly strong advocate of high quality services accompanied with some form of accreditation. On the other hand, I believe we have an aged care accreditation system that we can really ill afford.

It underpins inadequate funding levels that cannot provide enough resources for many providers to meet the expressed needs of care for residents. In the same way, our community aged care system is creaking because we cannot provide enough funding for the community aged care packages assessed by the Australian Government as needed by our citizens.

I hear staff all over Australia clamouring, not always for more wages, but for more pairs of hands to do the work. To do more than the system underpins…To go the extra mile… To sit for a few minutes when that is what the client really wants, and really needs… To spend time hearing what the real story is…

To quote a UK study of its Home Help services from the early 1980s – “Too much Charring and not enough Chatting”.

I could ask the question – Which provides more care, the Chatting or the Charring? Neither is necessarily more correct, but often we cannot even get to the question. The bureaucratisation of aged care is with us and the paperwork must be done at our own peril.

I have colleagues that will not (at this time) support minimum staff ratios. Quite rightly they see them as an un-affordable cost under the current funding methodology. How sad that we do not all see them as providing perhaps the single greatest opportunity right now to see a reduction in abuse, and a reduction in short cuts in care. How sad that we do not see minimum staff ratios as an opportunity to support our staff and see a visual improvement in the increased in quality of care. But implementation of minimum staff ratios will be quite costly.

I am still of the view that in Australia we have one the best aged care systems in the world. But for a range of reasons it is creaking.

Let’s all is to consider how much of a cost is there to stop, take stock, and with the next round of changes, really consider the long term impact of where we are heading and fight more intensely to protect the rights of those who are dependent upon us, the general public, for their livelihoods?

And who knows – the Royal Commission might investigate several inter services aspects around care of our elderly folks? One matter that I have discussed for the past decade is how much more proactive care we can provide in our aged care facilities, that might actually have a positive, beneficial impact on our national health and hospital care services.

In the past twenty years we have missed the opportunity to think outside the square with respect to fixing major State based hospitals. As a “cohort” of patients, frail elderly people are significant and frequent users of hospital services. Perhaps if we reviewed the aged care sector and its inherent possibilities we might find better solutions to our hospital problems.

Chatfield’s cartoon below was first published by me in December 2010 in an article containing many of the words in the commentary above. Not much has changed it seems!

To fix hospitals, first fix aged care!

I get it… Do You?

Elephant in the room?

So, what is the elephant in the room with aged care at the moment?

In a report released Friday 17 August 2018 that showed a recent increase in home care funding for elderly care recipients, there was a worrying trend in demand versus ability to provide that needed care.

That is, despite the growth in older people desiring home care services, the number of home care packages assigned (or available) is simply not keeping up with demand.

At 31 March 2018, according to figures only released on 17 August 2018, the queue waiting to receive a package had risen to 108,456 people.  That is an increase of 3,854 on those waiting at 31 December 2017.  Not only that , but just over half of all those in the queue have been assigned a package at a lower level than their needs require.  Remember this is all based on the Australian Government’s own approved needs assessment, and allocation of packages.

Contemporaneously we have demographers projecting the number of residential aged care places required to be built/developed is now at about 75,000 by 2025.  That is only eight years away.

Continue reading “Elephant in the room?”

Minimum – What Ratios?

I have never been a great advocate for regulated minimum staffing ratios, but prefer regulation of the things that are really important around provision of care services to the people, our care recipients.  If you like, having enough of the right people at the right time, and not just to fulfil a compliance requirement around the number of pairs of hands.

In completing this Review my own views around staffing, quality of care, industrial considerations and the like have changed – for the better.  It remains to be seen if those with the capacity to make an even more profound difference to improve care outcomes for frail, vulnerable, mainly elderly recipients of care – the Australian Government and Parliament – will actually choose to support those whom we serve.

Introduction

It seems that in Australia rarely a month goes by where the public is not informed of another aged care failing.  There is wide spread public perception of a lack of care and low quality of life for residents within the aged care system.  The call for greater regulation of minimum staffing standards and additional funds to meet them is prominent but seems to fall on deaf ears of the Australian Government.

Without residential aged care provision, residents would likely be inpatients in State based hospitals at several times the daily cost of care of a residential aged care facility.  However, the proportion of funds spent on care and service provision should be acquitted on what really matters – the care of people.

Keep reading >>

Download the full report >>

Shaky Foundation: Where is residential care today? 

I have been tracking various residential aged care data and some interesting comparison figures for two decades now since the Aged Care Act came into being in 1997.Please allow me to say right upfront – collecting relevant and appropriate data from indices can be difficult and not always truly comparable.

The data represented below is purely to make us think, and perhaps identify for providers at least, why it seems to have become so much more difficult to maintain a high quality residential aged care service today to people with more pressing multiple morbidities than ever before.

Clearly, by comparison, our funding foundation has worsened over the past twenty or so years.

Residential Aged Care Comparators:

Some description of the various indices follows:

Continue reading “Shaky Foundation: Where is residential care today? “

Free Flu Shots at Braemar

Some time back during one of our regular Braemar senior leadership meetings in 2017, we decided to take the lead in protecting our residents from influenza by offering complementary flu vaccines not just for our staff and residents, but also volunteers and the families of those in our care.

This week, free vaccinations were available at Braemar Cooinda and Braemar Village, while next week we will be providing the vaccines to those at Braemar House.

Here’s the latest instalment from artist Jason Chatfiled which was used as the banner on the day.

This move predated the recently announced Government plan to mandate all aged care providers to provide free flu vaccines to their staff. It was a decision we took as we felt it was an effective way to help reduce the risk of influenza entering the aged care environment.

The idea to expand the service to families and volunteers was developed by the Braemar team under the direction of Renee Reid, General Manager of Workforce. When chatting to Renee, she expressed the team’s desire to ‘meet and exceed best practice levels to reduce the risk of our health and care professionals contracting flu or passing it onto our residents,’ which to me demonstrates a commitment to resident health and wellbeing across the organisation.

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Presenting at a Global Conference on Integrated Care

The below is from Braemar’s Media Release:

Wayne Belcher (OAM) will speak at the Global Conference on Integrated Care at the start of February, where he will present an analysis of Australia’s aged care sector, two decades after the Aged Care Act (1997) was implemented.

His presentation will cover areas including the history of aged care in Australia and how it has transitioned from basic care homes to a major industry, a review of the care models currently being employed as deregulation takes effect, and a review of clinical governance.

International experts from the USA, UK, Canada and Hong Kong will be among the conference speakers, which will take place at the Resorts World Convention Centre in Singapore from 1- 3 February 2018.

Continue reading “Presenting at a Global Conference on Integrated Care”

Report and Recommendations – Joint Select Committee on End of Life Choices

I have been working back in the aged care sector since August 2016, and as many of you know I have been the Chief Executive Officer of Braemar since March 2017.  A few weeks back I did seek comment from colleagues and visitors to my blog about these “end of life choice” matters.  Thank you to those who have pondered, commented, and otherwise contributed on these things.

Pain, suffering, and distress are existential.  The desire to end one’s own life is based on existential circumstances with perhaps the view that there is little hope for any future improvement in life’s outlook.  The majority Christian view still is that Christ offers hope for an end to all suffering, but that happens at the natural end of this life – not a life brought to early closure.  The endurance of pain and suffering can seem intolerable, and the grasp of hope seemingly so far away.  We must develop ways in which we can assist to bridge the perceived gap between the existential pain and future hope by how we manage our pain, symptoms, and suffering and sense of loss; yet contemporaneously offer support to others afflicted by such suffering, grief and loss.

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Your Thoughts Wanted

Hi folks,

Two quite important matters are being discussed by parliamentary committees here in Western Australia over the next twelve months or so, and I seek your advice, attitudes, and thoughts on these matters.

The first matter, and also being discussed by the New South Wales and Victorian Parliaments respectively, is around “end of life choices”.

I seek your advice, attitudes, and thoughts about this important matter.

Continue reading “Your Thoughts Wanted”

Unfair Expectations?

I recently chaired an afternoon session for a “Law in Aged Care” seminar in Perth.  It was a very useful day’s focus on the myriad of interaction that aged care providers have with the law daily.  There can be matters associated with town planning, local government, occupational health and safety, fair work, accreditation and liability issues, and that might be just before morning tea …

In October 2017, the residential aged care sector reaches twenty years since the enactment of the Aged Care Act 1997 (Cth).  As I recall, for Western Australians it started on Monday 1 October being a public holiday Monday.  The then new Act was a mighty and useful change from the Aged and Disabled Persons Homes Act and the Health Act.  Whilst it has not all been plain sailing the Act pertaining specifically to aged care has, in my view, served Australia well.

Continue reading “Unfair Expectations?”

How fair is the Western Australian GST share?

 


For months, if not years, we have been hearing about Western Australia’s fair share, or rather the lack of it, with respect to GST payments to the States form the GST raised by the Australian Government.

Western Australia, under the current arrangements, receives just $0.34 from each $1.00 raised from within WA from GST revenue to the Australian Government. It clearly seems unfair. Particularly clearly unfair by direct comparison:
Continue reading “How fair is the Western Australian GST share?”