STOP PRESS
As The Lamp goes to print Japara announced the proposed changes were no longer to go ahead. The staffing at all Japara facilities is an ongoing concern to the ANMF. The residents’ families say staffing is still inadequate to ensure safe resident care and wish to continue fighting with the nurses.
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Aggressive cost-cutting at Japara nursing homes shows why aged care needs nurse-to-resident ratios laws.
Aged care nurses are resisting aggressive job cuts by Japara Healthcare under a company-wide roster-restructuring program.
Nursing hours have been cut at Japara facilities nationwide over the past 12 months. In NSW they include South West Rocks, Coffs Harbour, Forest View, Henley Manor, Wyong and Albury.
NSWNMA General Secretary Brett Holmes said the cuts are further proof that many aged care providers will not provide adequate care unless they are legally obliged to.
Brett said Japara is changing roster times to reduce staffing – for example, by increasing night shift hours that involve fewer staff.
Japara Healthcare’s chief financial officer, Christopher Price, boasted that the new rosters would boost profits.
Price told an investors’ conference in August that “operational initiatives largely related to the roster optimisation program … are running across all of our homes”.
He said 14 initiatives were completed in the first half of 2018 financial year and 15 in the second half, with the rest to be completed during the first half of the 2019 financial year.
He added: “This program is a key initiative for Japara, which should enable a further reduction in our wages-to-revenue ratio in FY ’19.
“Staff cost as a percentage of revenue has reduced in the last two halves to 69.5 per cent in the second half of FY ’18, versus 70.7 per cent in the second half of FY ’17, as the roster restructure program is progressively implemented.”
Threatened with dismissal for speaking publicly
At Japara’s Albury and District nursing home, staff said they were threatened with dismissal if they “brought the company into disrepute” by speaking publicly about the cuts.
However, they received welcome support from NSWNMA public hospital members who attended a rally outside the nursing home to call for mandatory ratios in aged care.
A meeting of residents and family members at the Albury facility unanimously called on the company to abandon proposed staff cuts and instead employ more nurses.
In an editorial, Albury’s Border Mail newspaper said the fears of residents and their family members were not allayed when Japara Healthcare addressed the meeting.
The paper said: “Japara staff told the gathering in Albury that the ‘minimum’ is being met. Surely we can aim for better than that.”
“Here are some questions and issues we would like to see addressed: Are staff numbers in nursing homes sufficient since there is no minimum legal ratio of staff to residents, no minimum training requirement and no statutory requirement to have a nurse on duty at all times?
“Should there be minimum requirements, since nurses now make up only 24 per cent of staff (and this is shrinking), and personal care assistants are now almost three-quarters of all staff?
“The only current legal requirement is the unenforceable rule that staff numbers are ‘adequate’.”
The strength of local opposition in Albury appears to have forced Japara to partially back down from its aim to cut two staff members on day and night shifts.
When this edition of The Lamp went to press, it seemed the company was instead seeking to reduce staffing from one registered nurse (RN) and five assistants in nursing (AiN) to one RN and four AiNs on a night shift.
Nurses said even this would leave one nurse to care for a section of 30 residents, including a locked dementia facility, and with two residents in that facility needing to be lifted by two staff.
Cuts at Wyong facility too
Proposed roster changes at Japara’s Wyong aged care facility amount to a cut in nursing hours of about 309 hours per week.
The cuts cover the roles of AiN, registered nurse and clinical nurse consultant.
In a letter to Japara, Brett Holmes said the Wyong cuts would adversely affect nurses’ capacity to provide quality care to residents and asked that Japara conduct a risk assessment of the impact on nurses.
He noted the Wyong facility failed a “significant number” of aged care quality standards set by the regulator in April this year.
“Whilst this was not under Japara’s management, we are concerned that a further reduction of staffing is ill advised.”
Brett said changed shift times would increase the length of night shift, when traditionally skeleton staffing was provided and many residents remained awake and active.
“The reduction of the afternoon shift length in particular will have a real impact on a number of our members’ contracted hours and incomes,” he said.
Japara CEO’s big payday
Japara was named in a report by the Tax Justice Network as one of the big six providers posting enormous profits while taking advantage of $2.17 billion in taxpayer subsidies.
The company took around 70 per cent of its revenue from government funding.
In an article headed “Time to justify expenses in industry littered with neglect, abuse”, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph reported that “Japara handed CEO Andrew Sudholz $2.09 million in pay and perks, including $990,000 in bonuses in the 2017 financial year”.
“At the same time as the company reported a profit of $29 million, it ordered staff to not check on residents overnight in a move that was criticised as a way to reduce staffing,” The Telegraph said.
“In the annual report Mr Sudholz set out just how bright the outlook was to make more money: ‘The fundamentals of the residential aged care industry remain favourable given Australia’s ageing population and increasing prevalence of entering residential care at a later age, with more chronic and complex health conditions, including dementia’.”
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