Queensland nursing homes ‘sanctioned’

Five Queensland nursing homes, including one run by Queensland Health, have been sanctioned by the Federal Government over serious complaints relating to hygiene, wound treatment and food.

Queensland has five of the nine nursing centres, from a total of 3,000 facilities Australia wide, now under close scrutiny.

Those now under threat of losing their Federal Government funding are:

• the Albany Garden Nursing Centre at Albany Creek;
• the Sir James Terrace nursing centre at Deception Bay;
• Yaralla Place (Queensland Health) in Maryborough;
• NyKu Byun in Cherbourg (Cherbourg Community Council); and
• the Rockingham Cardwell Shire Home for the Aged in Cardwell, north Queensland.

All are now under six-month Federal Government ‘sanctions’, which means they all risk losing their funding to provide aged care beds.

Brisbanetimes.com.au has reported that the complaints made against these centres include poor hygiene, poor treatment of wounds, poor food, problems in dealing with incontinence, staffing issues not being addressed, failure to address the cause of falls and in some centres, cases where residents have been choking from poor food provided to them.

A nurse administrator has now been appointed to run the Queensland Health facility at Maryborough.

Federal Minister for Ageing, Justine Elliot, released the breakdown of nursing centres identified through a new scheme of ‘unannounced’ visits around Australia.