It's good to have this column up and running again. We got so much feedback when we stopped doing it several years ago (little things like pandemic management taking up bandwidth, etc) that we thought we’d pick it up again when we got a chance.
Some great news to kick off with. Te Whatu Ora/The Ministry of Health has renewed our care facility certification for a further four years following another excellent audit.
All aged residential care facilities (rest homes) in NZ are audited to ensure they provide safe, appropriate care for their residents, and meet the standards set out in the Health and Disability Services (Safety) Act.
Aged Care Facility certification can be extended for two, three or four years – depending on the outcome of the audit. Most extensions are for three years and come with a list of improvements that need to be made.
This is the third consecutive four-year extension so we’re very pleased. It’s a real credit to our clinical nurse manager, Jarrah Tuoro, and the entire team who helped us across the line.
Certifications of individual rest homes, and the corrective actions they call for, are viewable on the Ministry of Health website, health.govt.nz, by typing ‘rest home audits’ in the search box.
We know from discussions with the families of our care residents that independent, impartial reviews of rest homes are hugely important when it comes to making decisions about where to place their loved ones.
Two-year extensions of certification normally indicate some level of concern on the part of inspectors so if a rest home has had more than a single two-year extension over the past six to eight years, it’s worth paying attention to the detail and corrective actions required.
Certification audits cover all aspects of a care facility’s operation, from the standard of clinical care right through to the quality of the food and cleaning services, documentation and record-keeping. A care facility can have its ability to operate removed if it fails audits.
Aged residential care facilities are all struggling at the moment with the shortage of Registered Nurses (RNs) and lack of government funding. At the same time, we face increasing demand for aged residential care. The risk here is that the care of our vulnerable elderly becomes compromised. So, keeping an eye on care facility audits is really important when selecting a home for your family member.
We are short of RNs at our village, so we’ve had to put in some work-arounds to care for our residents and mitigate risk. We report weekly to our DHB and Te Whatu Ora on our nursing cover while we continue to recruit. Our certification audit noted that we are short of nurses, but also that we are managing the risk.
Aged residential care continues to be a challenging sector to work in, yet the work we do is so important in terms of respecting and cherishing our elders who live with us.
Until next month, go well and stay safe.
