When an aged care home fails to meet accreditation standards, how do they start to rebuild trust and confidence back into the people they care for, their loved one and employees?
Turning communities around after a home’s reputation is damaged can be one of the greatest challenges. But by acknowledging their faults and taking ownership quickly, this will impact on how they rebuild themselves.
One facility who failed accreditation claimed that their shortcomings were “temporary” – and that if given the time, they would be able to fix things and be better.
Last year, Roseneath Aged Care Centre failed an inspection by the Australian Aged Care Quality Agency.
The Glen Innes nursing home failed to meet the mark in 17 out of 44 standards.
Assessors were particularly concerned about the resident’s pain relief, especially in their last days and in palliative care.
In the initial report said that “the home does not have an effective system to ensure all care recipients are as free as possible from pain.”
“The home is unable to demonstrate there are appropriately skilled staff in sufficient numbers to meet the health and lifestyle needs of care recipients.”
Some of the other feedback included; “care recipients state they wait long periods for assistance”
“Staff state they are unable to complete their duties due to inadequate staffing levels.”
“Management are not able to demonstrate care recipients receive appropriate clinical care.”
The lack of adequate palliative care “resulted in the care recipients not being supported in the relief of their pain and other symptoms, causing a lack of comfort and dignity being provided at the end of their lives.”
The chairwoman of the board and part-owner of Roseneath, Denise McOnie, explained that the problems seen at the facility are temporary and have since been fixed.
“In the last three months, we’ve turned everything around. The residents are very well cared for.” McOnie told the Glen Innes Examiner.
One of the problems, which they have since remedied, was staff shortages and a shortage of doctors. Since increasing these numbers, the facility has seen great improvements.
Australian Aged Care Quality Agency said that they would be watching the facility carefully, “we will continue to monitor the performance of the home including through unannounced visits.”
AACQA have recently conducted a second follow up inspection, the results of which will be released in May.
McOnie claims that the latest inspection has cleared the facility of failing to reach required standards.
As quality is in the eye of the beholder the resident will be the best to evaluate if an aged care home can truly redeem themselves.
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All Aged care homes should have unannounced visits. So the standard of care can be monitored more closely.
Totally agree, ALL VISITS BY ACCREDITATION people should be UNANNOUNCED. I worked for many years with different age care organisation and can tell you what happens. Staffing is ramped up, the facility spruced up, all staff are given a lecture about what no to say to say e.g. no mention of any incident, no mention of any problems what so ever. The food is ramped up, choices are given for that one or two days. It all appears so lovely, but underneath it all, staff, residents and families of residents, concerns were really not heard. It beggars belief that some organisations that have finally been called to account for bullying, harrassment and intimidation were only FOUND OUT because of family videos and calling a television program. After years of advocating, writing to the relevant reporting agencies the only thing I could do was to make difference to the individual person and their families.