Fair comment – Glenn Bunning responds to last week’s item on increased inspections of aged care facilities

Last week we reported on the response by the Federal Minister (Justine Elliot) to the 315% increase in complaints made relating to aged care: she announced an increase in inspections from 4,000 to 7,000 a year. Glenn Bunning, CEO of Sundale in QLD, sent us this email:

“In relation to the reported increases in aged care complaints included in your last newsletter perhaps consideration of the fact that a whole range of complaints are now covered by mandatory reporting requirements which were not in the previous period. You may also be interested to know that of the almost 4,000 complaints, the Aged Care Complaints Commissioner confirmed that less than 3% resulted in “Notices of Required Action” – about 113 to be precise. An NRA is clear evidence that some complaint has been found to be valid and the service provider has been required to take action to address it. When we allow the statistics to speak for themselves the picture is quite different from that painted by the Minister regrettably. Doubling unannounced visits for the sake of 113 valid complaints – is this a good investment of care related funds given that over 62 million days of residential care are provided in Australia each year. My calculator doesn’t have enough decimal places to work out the percentage…”

Greg Mundy (CEO of ACSA) makes the point that any complaint has to be investigated. “Our people are at the front line looking after the elderly. We want every compliant taken seriously and will investigate every one of them”.