More than 200 Victorian nursing homes have had coronavirus outbreaks, claiming the lives of more than 600 people, yet the government regulator isn't investigating — in fact, it hasn't even visited most of the facilities.
For Sandra Morris, the death of her father from coronavirus is not the worst of it. It was the days before he died that haunt her.More than 4000 aged care residents and staff have been infected with coronavirus, leading to 657 deathsFewer than 10 per cent of homes with outbreaks have been sanctioned by the regulator since the beginning of the pandemic"I think he had a horrific time there in that last week or so at that facility.
He told her that he would wait for hours after he pressed the call bell to go to the toilet or when he fell out of his wheelchair."He would ring me and say, 'get me out of here, things are really bad, you can't understand how bad it is,'" Ms Morris told 7.30. "It's hard to imagine that a government body like that is just allowing dad's aged care facility to just go on operating without any implementation that they improve their standards," she said.The commission, which assesses nursing homes on 44 standards once every three years, hadn't visited the Yarraville home for 18 months.
Government health workers intervened at Doutta Galla Yarraville during the worst of the COVID-19 outbreak. "It's a poor excuse to say they couldn't risk infection control by being in there. Would we say that if it was a childcare centre and there were children who had died? "In some instances it may not be appropriate or safe for the commission to visit a service until the outbreak is over," Ms Anderson said.Even before the crisis in Victoria, the Quality and Safety Commission had been criticised for suspending on-site inspections of nursing homes for some months just as the pandemic was beginning in Australia.
The commission has since taken tough action against 20 aged care homes with outbreaks by placing sanctions on most of them for six months. That still represents less than 10 per cent of facilities with clusters. Ms Anderson said the sanctions were placed after information from federal and state departments of health and first responders.Since the start of the pandemic, Victorian authorities have published the worst 10 clusters every day and nine of those facilities have been sanctioned, including well known outbreaks at St Basils and Epping Gardens.
In a statement, she said "the commission does not disclose planned and unannounced visits to a service or provider in order to maintain the integrity of the commission’s regulatory activities".
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