The Department of Health and Aged Care’s process to approve 24/7 RN exemptions is “very rigorous” Southern Cross Care Queensland’s (SCC QLD’s) Chief Operating Officer, Michael Wild, exclusively told The Weekly SOURCE.
SCC QLD has had five aged care homes in regional Queensland exempted from the 24/7 requirements. As of 15 August, the Department had approved 39 exemptions in total – the list of homes approved is available here.
“The Department was quite co-operative and they were empathetic to what we were going through, but they did make us jump through a lot of hoops to get to get there ultimately,” Michael said.
“We had to demonstrate alternate care arrangements that were in place. We had to demonstrate that we had escalation processes, people on call for telehealth as another alternative means. We ended up having to provide flow charts of escalations and policies and procedures.
“There were a lot of questions around what is your roster, what are your alternative care arrangements? What other staff do you have in place? What training do you provide for your personal care workers and your ENs? What escalation processes do you have? What are your support mechanisms?
“They also picked out the key risk areas of wound management and falls management. They wanted to understand our policies and procedures around that,” Michael said.
“They wanted to understand what we’ve done to try and recruit. We had to demonstrate how many ads we had placed and what sort of remuneration we were offering to show that we tried everything we could to get staff but hadn't been able to achieve those levels.
“It took at least two weeks or so of quite steady back and forward correspondence” before the approvals were received, Michael said.
Once Southern Cross Care Queensland received its first exemption, the remaining four came through “quite quickly”.
Exemptions are granted until 30 June 2024. Providers who wish to extend the exemption will need to reapply.
The SOURCE: The government has placed high importance on having RNs in aged care homes 24/7. For homes granted exemptions, the Department needs to ensure they are still delivering safe, high quality care.