Dear drron,
where is the link to the document produced by the Federal Govt setting out in detail the "Federal Aged Care Covid-19 plan & protocols"?
I have provided the links from the most up-to-date Fed Govt Dept of Health site - & there is no such document anywhere to be found.
The Fed Govt's response to the Aged Care Royal Commission is that no such document exists, but is being worked on.
The Fed Govt keeps refusing to mandate a minimum staff to resident ratio for normal times, let alone in a pandemic. Not even a requirement to have an RN on-duty overnight.
So if I am missing something, please provide the link to the many hundred page long document, "Federal Aged Care Covid-19 plan & protocols" instead of mentioning putting up links somewhere sometime in the past.
About Newmarch House & Dorothy Henderson Lodge - the Aged Care Royal Commission has both the emails & testimony that the Federal Govt had NO staff pre-arranged either at the time the statement was made by Scott Morrison nor when the requests were made. Merely it was the intention that staff WOULD be able to be sourced, they thought, if needed. The Federal Govt, in writing, admitted they did not expect that staff at any Nursing Home would need to quarantine themselves at home.
In the end NSW staff were used from the local public hospital - NO Federally sourced staff. I know this as a friend of mine was one of them (much to her family's concern).
You just love conspiracy theories don't you RAM.Many of course aren't what you think you know.Same with Newmarch house.You might want to read the Independent Inquiry report which refutes the Royal commission statement.And despite your friend knowing that there were no staff sourced from the Commonwealth that also is wrong as is well documented inthat report.
The report can be downloaded from here as well as the NSW dept. of Health answer trying to paint themselves in a better light.
An independent review into the COVID-19 outbreak at Newmarch House was commissioned by the Department of Health to understand what occurred and what could be learned from the experience. The review was undertaken by Professor Lyn Gilbert and Adjunct Professor Alan Lilly.
www.health.gov.au
A few excerpts.
On 12 April 2020, public health officers from the Nepean Blue Mountains Public
Health Unit (PHU) identified seven staff members who were close contacts of one or
both of the first two cases (one staff member and one resident) and required them
to home-quarantine. Professor James Branley, Director of Infectious Diseases at
Nepean Hospital, visited Newmarch House the same day and recommended that
residents with COVID-19 be admitted to the Nepean Hospital hospital-in-the-home
(HITH) program, in accordance with established Nepean Blue Mountains Local Health
District policy for COVID-19 patients.
Anglicare initially rejected offers to utilise the Department of Health’s surge
workforce program (via Aspen Medical and Mable®) on the basis that some of these
staff were reportedly unsuitable or that it would be able to source its own staff. They
successfully utilised several other agencies to bolster the workforce during this
challenging time. During the outbreak period, Aspen Medical and Mable® provided
less than 20% of the non-Anglicare care workforce with the remainder sourced from
other agencies, including St Vincent’s Hospital, which assisted specifically with the
provision of Registered Nurses.
Among the IPAC issues identified during this review, was the continuous,
unnecessary use of ‘full’ PPE (gowns, gloves, masks) in non-clinical ‘clean’ areas such
as the entrance foyer, offices and staff rooms and failure to change to fresh PPE on
entry to the rooms of COVID-19 negative residents. This represented a risk to other
residents and staff, if one of these residents was later diagnosed with COVID-19 and
potentially infectious, before the diagnosis was confirmed. Later when there were
shortages, full PPE was restricted to care of residents with known COVID-19. These
inconsistencies of use and the poor quality of some PPE meant that staff who had
been caring for residents, before they were diagnosed with COVID-19, were
automatically deemed to be close contacts and quarantined, sometimes possibly
unnecessarily.
Responding to initial and ongoing concerns about the outbreak at Newmarch House,
the Commission delivered a series of Notices and remedial actions under the
provisions of the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission Act 2018. These included
an administrative direction on 23 April 2020, a Non-compliance Notice on 3 May
2020 and finally, a Notice to Agree on 6 May 2020. The second Notice outlined a
number of requirements, including suspension of the admission of new residents
and the appointment of an Adviser.
The Commission issued an Administrative Direction to Anglicare on 23 April 2020
requiring it to engage an external management team from the BaptistCare. This
team of three senior managers had had previous experience with the first Australian
COVID-19 outbreak at the Dorothy Henderson Lodge. Anglicare agreed cooperatively
to this arrangement, recognising that guidance was required and that
there was already mutual respect between the Approved Providers. The BaptistCare
team arrived the following day, on Friday 24 April 2020 and feedback indicated,
unequivocally, that this was a welcome turning point in the management of the
outbreak at Newmarch House.
Following the appointment of the Baptistcare team on 24 April 2020, one of the first
changes was to implement 12-hour rostered shifts, with the aim of limiting
opportunities for spread of COVID-19 between staff members. This new roster
commenced on 2 May 2020.
Then you might like to read this recent piece by a palliative care physician.
When the history of this pandemic is written, it will be the leaders who were open, candid and inclusive who will receive the accolades, writes Will Cairns
insightplus.mja.com.au
He is not convinced that the Royal commission is the place to work out problems in the pandemic response.
The
Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety has also bought into the issues of the pandemic in aged care as though they are a stand-alone problem, and applied the inquisitorial style of interrogation of our prosecutorial/adversarial legal system to civil servants; those working within a system that they did not create and for which we are all responsible. It seems rather unfair to seek to allocate blame for immediate impacts of a pandemic imposed on the consequence of decades of poorly considered responses to a problem identified by demographers 50 years ago.
www.fbi.gov
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