Aged Care sector welcomes talks

Aged Care sector welcomes talks

New Zealand’s organisation representing aged residential care facilities welcomes today’s first meeting held by Grey Power and opposition political parties into the state of aged care.

The NZ Aged Care Association’s chief executive, Martin Taylor, said: “We need to ensure the best information is supplied at the meetings. For example, it is being claimed that the Office of the Auditor General’s 2009 report said there was a problem in the sector with the quality of care delivery. This incorrect. Page 13 of the report clearly states under 1.18:

What we did not audit
1.18 We did not set out to form a view on the adequacy of the Standards or the quality of the care provided to rest home residents. The certification of any health and disability services other than those provided in rest homes was also outside the scope of our audit.

“It is also important to understand over 40,000 people receive care in 715 aged care facilities each and every year, and that in 2009 the Ministry of health received 174 complaints of which 61 were substantiated.”

“While one substantiated compliant is one to many, the reality is we are all human and it is unrealistic to expect every one of the sector’s 35,000 caregivers, nurses, and mangers to be infallible on every day of every year,” Mr Taylor said.

“It will also be important for everyone to understand how we got to this point such as the lack of any funding increases between 2000 and 2004, how the present quality framework legislation was implemented in 2003 and how the contract between DHBs and providers was set in 2003,” Mr Taylor said.

ENDS

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