The Royal Commission resumed on Tuesday, with focus shifting to a need for the community to take more responsibly for elderly Australians receiving care at home.
Chairman of the NSW Ageing and Disability Commission Robert Fitzgerald told the commission as many as 3.6 million older Australians will required aged care at home by 2050.
But the absence of oversight makes this setting the “highest risk” in the sector.
“The highest risk for older people in the aged care system is within the home. I know all of the attention focuses in on the residential settings and there are high risks in those,” Mr Fitzgerald said.
“It's not to say that people are more harmed or more damaged in the home, but without the line of sight that exists, the risks are higher.”
Associate Professor Gillian Caughey, principal research fellow with the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute which authored Research Paper 8 - International and National Quality and Safety Indicators for Aged Care, also appeared at the hearing.
Professor Caughey towed a similar line, telling the Commission that monitoring of aged care quality indicators at home "simply doesn't exist", but also suggested quality indicators developed by her team could be implemented within six months.
We’ve covered today’s hearings in-depth in our newsletter The Daily Commission.
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