Aged Care
ACAT privatisation digs a deeper hole for aged care
Aged Care Nurse Jocelyn Hoffman writes about what the proposed privatisation of Aged Care Assessment Teams will mean for the sector.
The federal government made a quiet announcement last December that it will privatise the Aged Care Assessment Teams from April 2021.
The ACATs are teams of registered nurses, geriatricians and allied health professionals who work at public hospitals to assess the level of care required by our elderly Australians. This is an independent organisation that provides an invaluable service to our older community. They assess their complex care needs and assist them and their carers to access appropriate levels of support, either at home or in a residential aged care home.
How can the Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt and our Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck allow the privatisation to go ahead while the Aged Care Royal Commission is yet to submit its recommendations in November this year?
Privatisation and deregulation in the Aged Care sector has led to chronic understaffing. The Royal Commission has exposed the Aged Care sector as a “shocking tale of neglect!”
Our elderly have paid an expensive price in this harrowing debacle.
I fear that the privatisation of the Aged Care Assessment Teams will lead down the same pathway.
Will lucrative companies that run nursing homes be in charge of the assessments of patients? Will the patients be sent to the companies’ own residential aged care facilities or in their homes? If at home, will the care be provided by their own “agencies”? Will the assessors be trained professionals or will the staffing be downgraded? A lack of assessors will lead to long waiting times in hospitals. Will there be transparency and financial accountability?
The Tax Justice Network has exposed (the tax avoidance of) the six largest for-profit companies in Australia, namely Bupa, Opal, Regis, Estia, Japara and Allity, who received over $2.17 billion annually in government subsidies for aged care services and we are yet to see the information on funding and staffing ratios in the aged care sector.
Interestingly, One Nation and the federal government blocked the Aged Care Legislation Amendment Bill 2019 last December. This bill, moved by the Centre Alliance Senator Stirling Griff, would have required residential aged care providers to give annual financial statements – the actual costs spent on food, staffing and other costs spent on delivering care – to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commissioner, who would then make them public.
The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety revealed that in 2018, 16,000 older Australians died waiting for a Home Care Package and 13,000 people were placed into aged care facilities while waiting for a package they never received.
We have been told incessantly by this government that privatisation and the free market system will thrive on an assumption of consumer choice. Once the ACAT has been privatised, there will be no such thing as “consumer choice”. Sadly, decisions about their care will not be determined by them-selves or by their loved ones, but by profit-seeking corporations.
What kind of society have we become?
Chris Flannery says
What should be privatised to deliver a true picture of Aged Care Facilities and enable reform is current Government Accreditation
System in Aged Care which appears weak and easily manipulated by some providers.
This I observed while working as an R.N. &Educator in facilities.
J McDonald says
Well said. Privatisation of the ACAT/RAS service must be stopped. Those working in this area not only provide an assessment service but are advocates for the older person and a valuable resource for carers. If these services are privatised how can assessors be independent and impartial when completing assessments.
Aleisha WOODWARD says
Rural nsw where I am trying to get help for my 97 year old relative is so corrupt and greedy. They are not being watched by anyone but themselves and the chroyism it is enveloped in. The people who are doing the ACAT assessment are the same people who currently are providing in home services via other funding means where the client has very little say in anything much. They do not want to be handing out home care packages. One barrier for the victims is the regional area wait time and the other is the home care package bias concealment of facts and railroading of the poor old person who cannot understand the complicated deliberate confusion of who does what and what is what etc… do not want the packages being given out. Also there is the home care package itself wait time. If the elderly applying for home care services get approval then The private companies who provide services ( shockingly and do the ACAT assessment ) lose control of the individuals funding and the individual has a say in what they need and who does it. They do not have to pay these greedy opportunists money for controlling their services. How disgraceful and how brazen they are in their freedom to be monopolizing the entire system taking full advantage of some of the most frail and vulnerable on the community. I am coming after them now that I have figured out what they are doing behind the confusing smoke screen they have been hiding behind
Helen M Ryan says
WE have allowed big business to take over the world and it will take a revolution to undo it. Bit like Hong Kong but it will be worse.!!!!