"Dying alone": Royal commission highlights aged care crisis
One of the commissioners of the Royal Commission into aged care says the system is in crisis - and that the federal government is to blame for failing to prepare for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Commissioner Lynelle Briggs - formerly the CEO of Medicare Australia - said the isolation of elderley people in their rooms for months without regular showers and care was “completely unacceptable”.
“What we’re looking at in aged care is months on end with no-one visiting them, and sometimes dying alone,” Ms Briggs said.
“It really shouldn’t be allowed to happen and the government should have sorted its strategy out for how to prevent this happening again.”
Ms Briggs said the government’s lack of preparation had taken “a bad situation to a crisis”.
With the submission of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety’s final report last year, the commissioners recommended significant and urgent work was needed to improve the workforce and governance of aged care.
The report, simply titled Neglect, painted a heartbreaking picture of the conditions people have experienced in aged care settings, including cases of abuse, poor nutrition, and substandard care regarding oral health, injuries, mental health and social needs.
Recently, Minister for Aged Care Richard Colbeck has faced mounting calls to resign as the number of deaths in aged care in the last month have outstripped those for the whole of 2021.
Since July 2021, a total of 777 aged care residents have died with Covid.
Around 500, or 64 percent, have passed away within the last month.
Senator Colbeck has denied that the system is experiencing a crisis and says Australia has seen fewer deaths than overseas.
However, Ms Briggs said this isn’t good enough.
“The fact that we’re doing better than overseas on deaths in aged care is not the answer,” she said.
“We were quite clear in the reports we put through that the life of an older person should be valued equally with the life of a younger person.
“We shouldn’t be seeing the disproportionate impact on this group when we’ve known for two years they were particularly vulnerable to the disease.”
When Channel Nine asked Defence Minister Peter Dutton about the problems in aged care, he said it was hard to find the balance between protecting residents and ensuring they weren’t completely isolated.
“You can’t argue on the one hand that people feel isolated and you want to allow loved ones in - which is the natural reaction - but then say we’re surprised when Omicron is introduced into aged care facilities,” Mr Dutton said.
“It’s a witches’ brew, it’s difficult to deal with.”
The comments from Ms Briggs come days after the federal government announced it would offer two one-off $400 payments to aged care workers to recognise the continuing difficulty of their work and retain workers, with a quarter of shifts reportedly going unfilled.
Unions and the opposition have called the payments an insult to workers, with the government rejecting pressure to back a Fair Work case for a $5 hourly wage increase.
Ms Briggs said the royal commission had warned of a worker shortage a year ago, and that the workers in the aged care sector were under-recognised, underpaid and underskilled.
She said the one-off payments were “simply not enough” and that not introducing a pay rise was “short-sighted”.
“I had been expecting that the government would join with employers and employees in this case,” she added.
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