In last week’s Senate Estimates hearings, Shadow Aged Care Minister Senator Anne Ruston asked if the Department is considering including Enrolled Nurses (ENs) in the 40 care minutes for RNs, revealing she is in touch with the concerns affecting Australia’s aged care providers.
“We still are extremely short of registered nurses... has there been any consideration given to the constant calls from the sector in relation to the absence of recognition of the value proposition of enrolled nurses in care minutes," she said.
“It has been something the sector has been calling out for since the care minutes were put in place.”
“The reason we have the RN minutes target is because it was a royal commission recommendation and there wasn’t a similar recommendation around enrolled nurses. But we’re closely monitoring the use of enrolled nurses in residential aged care and we very much value their presence there,” replied Deputy Secretary for Ageing and Aged Care, Michael Lye.
Regional providers struggling with 24/7 RNS
Senator Ruston told Senate Estimates there was a “huge amount of concern” from aged care providers that are not complying with the 24/7 RN requirements.
“Some are saying that they’ll do it for a while and see how it goes. Others are saying they're likely to close ... We're talking mainly about rural and regional nursing homes,” she said.
Tight reform timeline
Senator Ruston was also “concerned” about the tight time frames for the new Aged Care Act, with an exposure draft being released in December, and only 10 weeks for consultation before the new Act is due to be enacted on 1 July 2024.
Regulator's use of contractors
In response to questions from Senator Janet Rice, Aged Care Quality and Safety Commissioner Janet Anderson told Senate Estimates third-party assessors conducted just over 1,000 audits in 2022-23 of a total of around 1,500. This financial year, they are expected to conduct only around 600.
The contractors are hired through workforce suppliers RSM, HDAA, SAI Global and KPMG, although SAI Global is no longer a supplier, the Commissioner said.
The Commission has created a quality assurance group that assesses reports, and at times, reports are rejected and further work on them is required to meet the Commission’s “quality benchmarks”.