Dozens of elderly people have been unnecessarily taking up ACT hospital beds while they wait for residential aged-care places, health insiders say.
Sources have told The Canberra Times that at the beginning of last month 85 patients in Canberra hospitals had been assessed as requiring residential aged care.
Keeping aged people in hospital is more expensive than placing them in residential aged care and can carry an increased risk of falls or infection.
The ACT Health Directorate said yesterday that last month 68 patients in Canberra’s two public hospitals were referred to the Aged Care Assessment Team to identify what services they required.
Only two patients in the Canberra Hospital were waiting for residential aged-care places, a spokesman for the Health Directorate said.
Anton Hutchinson, who owns the 80-bed Kankinya Aged Care Facility in Lyneham, said elderly people could experience excessive stays in hospital before a place was found for them despite the fact there was about about a 12 per cent vacancy rate in the local residential aged-care sector.
“The Aged Care Assessment Team used to supply facilities with direct contacts for recently assessed people to assist both the resident and the facility in gaining occupancy but over recent months this practice has ceased,” Mr Hutchinson said.
“Previously the hospitals were aware and conscious of nursing home vacancies and contact was made to deliver services, this has also ground to a halt. These vacancies are both frustrating and critical in an industry that sees one in three high-care facilities operating in the red.”
Mr Hutchinson said his facility, which specialises in caring for high-needs dementia patients, was operating at a profit but currently had eight vacancies.
If the vacancy rate increased for a prolonged period he could be forced to reduce staff levels.
Anglicare Canberra and Goulburn aged-care business manager Gayle Sweaney said there were vacancies at her agency’s two ACT aged-care homes.
She said staff spoke with hospitals on an almost daily basis to help ensure that vacancies were quickly filled. But elderly people hospitalised because of illness or injury often struggled to accept the subsequent news that they needed nursing home-type care.
“If there’s people sitting inappropriately in the acute sector it’s probably more about their choices and what they want to do or not being medically quite stable enough to move out,” she said.
Mrs Sweaney said one way of easing pressure on the hospital system while elderly people were waiting for a residential aged-care unit might be to introduce a step-down unit “where people could come and be more appropriate cared for in a more home-like environment until they’ve worked through the family transitioning and those sorts of things.”
The Health Directorate spokesman said several issues could delay admission to residential care.
These included people’s personal choice in not accepting changed care needs, issues with finances or inability to provide consent due to medical issues.
“In some cases there is also the need for a public guardian to be appointed, this process taking additional time.” he said.
A liaison nurse communicated with aged-care providers and provided support to patients and carers until placement occured.
The spokesman said a weekly list of clients was no longer given to aged-care facilities because of concerns about privacy and confidentiality and a belief the list was of little value.
The liaison nurse made contact with residential care providers on behalf of clients at least once per week.
Royal Australasian College of Physicians Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine president-elect Chris Poulos said prolonged hospital stays could prove dangerous for older people, especially if they spent large parts of the day in bed.
“If you put an older person to bed for a few days that sort of loss of muscle strength and fitness may be the thing that stops them getting up completely and they’ve got to put a lot of effort in getting back into that degree of mobilisation that they had before,” Dr Poulos said.
“If somebody’s got some mild cognitive impairment as a result of age, being in a foreign hospital sort of environment can cause more confusion and that can result in people getting up and having falls,” he said.
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