Few important things going on in #agedcare lately:

1) Bupa ANZ continues to top our list of worst-performing aged care providers, with 39 sanctions & penalties in the last three years - and an underlying profit of $407m in FY2021 #auspol #agedcarerc
theaustralian.com.au/nation/politic… Those playing along at home will know Bupa has been besieged with abuse scandals, sanctions, and care failures. Its homes keep being reaccredited. Occasionally its funding is frozen. It does "apologise" every time, though, so there's that. #auspol
abc.net.au/news/2022-08-1…

Ok, here goes. The election's tomorrow. Somehow there are still undecided voters out there. A definitive measure of any politician's leadership is how they care for our most vulnerable citizens - so let's look at Morrison's track record on aged care. Thread #auspol #ausvotes When Morrison came to power, he inherited a raft of recommendations to fix aged care from past inquiries, including staffing ratios, pay raise, better regulation & more financial transparency. Rather than implementing these, he called a Royal Commission #auspol #ausvotes

It's important to urgently clarify what the Royal Commission recommended re: Registered Nurses being on-site in aged care facilities 24/7, what the Morrison govt said in its RC response, and the different claim Anne Ruston made yesterday. Short thread #auspol The RC made two key recommendations re: staffing. The first was a requirement of a minimum number of care minutes per resident per day, with a proportion of those to be delivered by an RN. The second was that an RN should be on-site in all aged care homes 24/7 #auspol #agedcare

Aged care timeline:

16 Sept 2018: Morrison calls Royal Commission
31 Oct 2019: Interim Report, "Neglect"
1 Mar 2021: Final Report. PM holds press conference, but gives journos no time to read it
11 May 2021: Government buries its "response" to Final Report on budget day #auspol Feb 2022: More than 3 years after Morrison called the Royal Commission, and almost a year since the final report, the sector is in the worst crisis in its history, Colbeck apparently still has no idea what's happening in his own portfolio, and the PM is off washing hair #auspol

Re: @Senator_Patrick’s calls for a Royal Commission into Australia’s COVID response:

We’ve just had a $120m+ 3 yr RC into #agedcare. Morrison is yet to front a presser & answer questions about its recs. Reform-wise, the govt has cherry-picked easy fixes w/ no scrutiny #auspol The thing about RCs and inquiries is they’ve got to produce systemic change. Otherwise they’re expensive fact-finding missions that tell us what we already know.

Look at all 17 major inquiries into aged care preceding the RC. All identified the same issues and made similar recs.

If the Commonwealth's central response to the Aged Care Royal Commission is $10bn to the sector over the next five years, the RC has been for nought.

Giving providers billions without increased regulation and transparency will fix nothing. #auspol smh.com.au/politics/feder… The Commonwealth's response to the aged care crisis over many years has been to roll out successive "funding boosts."

The sector needs a complete overhaul, not a $10bn payday. Where is the federal government's commitment to a new Aged Care Act? #auspol #agedcarerc

So the minister who had NO PLAN to prevent outbreaks in aged care, made PPE training voluntary, put no policy in place regarding hospital transfers, and didn't even know the numbers of deaths, is now pointing fingers.

THE TEMERITY. #auspol #agedcarerc
smh.com.au/politics/feder… In case anyone needs a reminder, Colbeck:

- Put no national plan in place for COVID in aged care
- Couldn't even say whether he'd briefed Cabinet about the Royal Commission's interim report
- Did not know the number of aged care deaths in Senate hearings - not once, but TWICE

Yesterday, Morrison referred to the Australian Health Sector Emergency Response Plan for Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) as part of the government's "comprehensive plan" for aged care.

The phrase "aged care" only occurs in this document 20 times. Here they are:
#auspol #agedcarerc 1. Aged care lumped into a list of groups that may require special strategies.

I'm having a read through of the CDNA National Guidelines, touted by Brendan Murphy today at the #agedcarerc as a "comprehensive national plan" for COVID in aged care.

First of all, these are clearly guidelines, not a plan; they say so repeatedly.

#auspol #agedcarerc Secondly, the entire document itself is only 44 pages long. If you subtract the posters at the end from the WHO on hand washing and coughing and sneezing, it is 39 pages long.

Minus appendices, it is 20 pages long. "Comprehensive"? Hardly. #auspol #agedcarerc

Aged Care Minister Colbeck said he was "shocked" by the neglect revealed in the #agedcarerc Interim Report.

He insisted providers were "doing well across the board" in May, and made no federal COVID aged care plan.

At what point does naiveté become incompetence? #auspol Remember, Colbeck is part of the government that CALLED the #agedcarerc due to systemic neglect - yet he had the gall to claim he was "shocked" by the findings of its interim report.

If he were across his portfolio, NOTHING in that report should have shocked him. #auspol

The destructive effects of aged care privatisation in Australia: thread.

Commonwealth funding of aged care is tipped to reach $21.7bn+ in this financial year.

This is 80% of the sector's funding. The remaining 20% is contributed by consumers through RADs and daily fees. #auspol Thanks to the reforms ushered in via the 1997 Aged Care Act, this $21.7+ billion of Commonwealth funding is not earmarked for care. It is up to providers' discretion how they spend it.

So long as they meet the accreditation requirements, they can retain unspent monies as profit.

Here I am with my dad, in the year I decided standing on one foot in photos was going to be my thing.

My dad endured my flamingo phase in bemused silence. He always stood beside me, even through my most ill-begotten ideas. #agedcarerc He was also brilliant. His PhD looked like this: page after page of insane equations, theorising the movement of particles in fluid.

I have never known anybody who loved working as much as my dad. His favourite saying was ‘it’s only work if you don’t enjoy it.’ #agedcarerc