A CCTV trial in SA aged care homes has been labelled as “botched” by state Health Minister Chris Picton.
The trial, which launched in 2021 and ran for 12 months, cost the Federal Government $785,000 and was aimed at addressing elder abuse, as well as detecting falls and other incidents.
The main issue with the program is that it created a mountain of false positives, overwhelming staff and leading to real issues being missed. 12,000 false incidents were detected by the AI-based CCTV technology, said Mr Picton (pictured).
“That meant that staff had to respond time after time after time to false reports alerting from this system; that meant that they were taking time away from caring for patients at the bedside,” he told the ABC.
“The report notes that where there were some cases of actual true reports that were noted, it meant that staff weren’t responding to them because it became a case of the boy who cried wolf.”
The trial took place in two SA aged care homes from March 2021 and was the first of its kind – but now Mr Picton says the whole program needs to be restarted. The SA State Government will now be liaising with stakeholders and community members to ascertain how technology like CCTVs can be properly used.
The trial’s apparent failure is the latest in a string of issues facing the SA Government. A steering committee set up to oversee the trial was the subject of news reports in 2019, when Stewart Johnston – the whistle-blower who uncovered the abuse and poor treatment of residents of SA’s Oakden aged care facility in 2018 – quit the project.
“We’ve achieved nothing — the bureaucracy is out of control and aged care residents remain at risk,” Stewart said at the time.
The trial was originally going to be established by UK monitoring company Care Protect, but it pulled out of the program. SA company Sturdie Trade Services then took over.
The Federal Department of Health and Aged Care has said no further trials are being planned, but that CCTV monitoring may still be looked at in the future.
