Extract from ABC News
An aged care facility in central Queensland that has been flying staff in from Melbourne to stay open will close its doors at the end of the year.
Key points:
- An aged care facility in Mt Morgan is closing as it cannot find enough staff
- It comes as another centre in Tiaro is closing, due to new 24/7 RN requirements
- The government says 'the forecast gap' of the number of RNs needed has reduced by 3,000
Carinity Summit Cottages, the only dedicated aged care facility in Mount Morgan, has 23 residents who will have to find alternative accommodation by December.
Dave Angell, interim CEO for Carinity, said the decision came down to a nationwide shortage of aged care staff, which has worsened in recent months, as well as Mt Morgan's regional location.
"We are just unable to recruit and retain enough registered nurses and care staff in Mt. Morgan," Mr Angell said.
He said the centre needed four full-time registered nurses over and above what it currently had, as well as seven care workers, to be fully staffed.
Mr Angell said Carinity had been maintaining staffing levels by bringing in workers from its other facilities around the state, as well as agency staff.
"We've got a couple of registered nurses at the moment who are agency staff from Melbourne, we've had to fly them in and put them up in Rockhampton," he said.
"That's the process we will have to use until [closure]."
The centre will not close until alternative accommodation for all the residents is found.
Many will have to relocate to Rockhampton facilities, about 40 minutes away.
Seventy-six aged care centres have closed across the country in the past two years, according to the federal department of health and aged care.
But of those, the department said 61 per cent were due to "ageing facilities or outdated stock".
24/7 nursing and wage increase
This month the requirement for aged care homes to have at least one RN on-site 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, came into effect — a recommendation from the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety.
That requirement has lead to another centre, a low-care, 10-bed facility in Tiaro, also closing.
Churches of Christ, which runs the Petrie Gardens Residential Aged Care centre, said the 10 patients would be moved to its Fair Haven centre in Maryborough, 25 minutes away.
Some aged care facilities can apply for exemptions to the new requirements.
The department said it had received 50 eligible applications for exemptions, and each one would be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
"In 2023-24, the forecast gap in the number of RNs needed has reduced from 11,700 to 8,400 and for Personal Care Workers this has reduced from 13,700 to 13,300," a spokesperson for the department said.
Tom Symondson, CEO of the Aged and Community Care Providers Association, said every state and territory was feeling the pressure.
"Everywhere that has workforce shortage has this problem," he said.
"We've got to get people to take up more nursing…and we've got to get them to work in aged care, when they are qualified."
However, in Mount Morgan, staff shortages were an issue long before the new requirements came into effect, though Carinity has confirmed they 'did not help the situation.'
This month a 15 per cent wage increase for the aged care sector also came into effect.
"But there are very few organisations that actually pay award wages, everybody's been needing for a while to pay above award anyway, the competition is [that] strong," Mr Angell said.
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