Bupa CEO says sorry for 'totally unacceptable' failings in aged care network

Updated

The CEO of the largest private provider of aged care facilities has apologised "unreservedly" for care failures across its network of 72 aged care facilities and pledged to fix problems in failing homes within months.

Key points: In September 2018 Bupa Seaforth failed 34 of the 44 quality and safety standards it is required to meet for accreditation

Bupa CEO Hisham El-Ansary has apologised, saying "we lost our focus on what we were doing"

The Department of Health has weekly meetings with Bupa

In an interview with 7.30's Leigh Sales, Bupa's chief executive officer Hisham El-Ansary said the ABC's coverage of shocking incidences in Bupa facilities were "totally unacceptable".

"We are capable of much better, and we are working very hard to restore confidence in the services that we deliver across 72 homes and 6,500 residents."

Bupa is Australia's biggest private aged care chain but an analysis of its accreditation reports shows more than 60 per cent of its homes are failing basic standards of care and 30 per cent are putting the health and safety of the elderly at "serious risk".

Mr El-Ansary said in the interview that Bupa only considered 18 of its homes out of the 72 as "falling short of standards".

He committed to fixing problematic homes "over the next couple of months" and promised Sales that if he sat down to an interview with her in a year, all of the current failing facilities would have been brought up to scratch.

Bupa received nearly half a billion dollars in government funding last year for its aged care facilities.

Yesterday, the Minister for Aged Care Richard Colbeck revealed that his department had been meeting with Bupa management weekly to fix dozens of non-compliance issues across the provider's properties.

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Bupa Seaforth's multiple problems revealed in government investigation

The 7.30 program also uncovered a confidential government investigation of Bupa Seaforth, in Sydney's northern beaches, with incidences of disappearing dementia patients, dying residents left hungry and in pain, and multiple reports of residents assaulting one another.

The audit paints a disturbing picture of life inside Bupa Seaforth, with families saying there are not enough staff, and workers do not know how to care for people with dementia.

The confidential report by the regulator was ordered after a carer was caught on camera assaulting a resident with a shoe. He has since served jail time for the offence.

'Medication mistakes a widespread ongoing problem'

The government website published an edited version of the review audit report showing the Seaforth home's 34 standard failures in September last year.

But 7.30 has obtained a copy of the unedited 113-page confidential report by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, which contains detail such as:

A male resident with dementia was found undressing a woman with dementia "while resident was crying on her bed"

"Care recipients being assaulted by other care recipients"

A woman was "assaulted by two men", with the woman's doctor saying she was "clearly quite traumatised and fearful as a result of this"

Allegations of physical and sexual assaults do not have to be reported to the Department of Health or to the police if the abuse is by someone living with dementia.

Are you worried about aged care in Australia? The aged care royal commission continues and so does our investigation. Let us know if you have a story or issue you'd like the ABC to look into. Email aged.care@abc.net.au to tell us your story.

However, staff are required to put behavioural strategies in place within 24 hours.

When this was raised by inspectors at Bupa Seaforth, the general manager "was unaware of this requirement and said: 'Is that a requirement?'".

The report detailed other complaints, including about incontinence pads being left on for 12 hours, residents with dementia disappearing from the home, and dying residents being left in pain and hungry.

The inspectors found Bupa Seaforth had "a widespread ongoing problem with care recipients not receiving the medications ordered for them".

Families complained the home was so short-staffed "other family members or paid companions are in the home with their family member on a daily basis because otherwise the care recipient's needs will not be met".

After the September 2018 inspection, Bupa Seaforth failed 34 of the 44 quality and safety standards it is required to meet for accreditation.

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission gave the nursing home a "timetable for improvement" but further inspections throughout the year continued to show the home had many safety and care failures.

Finally, in May this year, after failing 26 of the 44 standards, the commission said it would revoke its accreditation on October 17 unless it passed all the standards.

'They'd be yelling out for help'

One family interviewed on 7.30 told of similar problems at the dementia unit at Bupa Templestowe in Melbourne.

Ernie Poloni was a resident there for four years until the family moved him to a new facility earlier this year.

"That dementia ward was horrendous, to put it lightly," Mr Poloni's daughter Vivian Poloni said.

"[Residents] were just left unattended, they were just walking around, they'd be falling over, they'd be yelling out for help."

Late last year the aged care regulator declared the Templestowe home a "serious risk" to residents, but just a month later Bupa Templestowe was given the all clear.

However, the Poloni family was so concerned for Ernie they put a hidden camera in his room. The camera's recording shows carers who appear to have no training in dementia and do not explain or reassure the 85-year-old as they undress him and prepare him for a shower.

"It's just rough handling. It's not saying, 'Ernie, I'm just going to take your pyjama top off'. It's just, you know, ripping it off," Ms Poloni said.

"He's a human being, but they're just treating him like a piece of meat or something."

The family never lodged a complaint or made Bupa aware of the footage. Instead it moved him into a new nursing home which costs the same but, the family says, has superior care.

"He's being cared for so much better. Like the quality is fantastic and we're paying the same," Ms Poloni said.

Department of Health has weekly meetings with Bupa

Over the past year, Bupa nursing homes have been taken to task by the aged care regulator for failures including understaffing, a lack of training and assaults in care.

Of Bupa's 72 nursing homes:

45 have failed to meet all the health and safety standards

22 homes have been declared as putting the health and safety of residents at "serious risk"

13 Bupa homes have been sanctioned, which means they have lost government funding and are unable to take new residents

Four other homes — NSW's Berry and Eden, Victoria's Traralgon and Tasmania's South Hobart — have had their accreditation revoked and then re-accredited.

Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck declined to be interviewed for 7.30, but in a statement said the Department of Health was holding weekly meetings with Bupa about its response to the failures.

"Persistent failure to meet aged care quality and safety standards is simply unacceptable and approved providers must either return to compliance or risk having their status revoked which brings significant financial penalty," Senator Colbeck said.

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Former personal care assistant Lenni Downing has worked in three Bupa homes over the past decade and told the ABC untrained staff and understaffing were the main problems.

"They've got this whole thing about, you know, person-centred care. If they had person-centred care, what's happening with Bupa wouldn't be happening," Ms Downing said.

"Mostly carers are good. They're good people. They go above and beyond. But there's just not enough of us."

There are no set staff-to-resident ratios in aged care, an issue the aged care royal commission will examine in detail.

When asked on 7.30 what the correct staffing ratio is for aged care, Bupa's CEO Mr El-Ansary said: "I don't know that there is a right staffing ratio."

"A lot of the clinicians that we have on our teams say to me, what's important is actually understanding the health status of individual residents in individual homes — do they have dementia, do they have multiple conditions — and making sure that the ratio or the relationship of qualified nurses to assistant nurses to carers is appropriate for the mix of that home," he said.

But Ms Downing said it was not just staff that were being cut— so too were basics for residents.

"Meals were disgraceful. Party pies, sausage rolls. They weren't supplying toothbrushes, toothpastes. They had like a three [incontinence] pad allocation," she said.

Topics: aged-care, community-and-society, assault, sexual-offences, health, melbourne-3000, sydney-2000, seaforth-2092, templestowe-3106, australia

First posted