Tony Ryall's comments on aged care | Age Concern New Zealand

Health Minister Tony Ryall on aged care - home support and rest homes

"More of us are living longer, and many of us can expect to live beyond the

age of 85. Like many governments around the world, the National

Government is committed to supporting our elderly to stay in their homes for

as long as they can - as much as we can.

And if an older person moves into residential care, then we want them and

their families feeling safe and happy about that choice.

Home Support has been in the news lately. This year around 75,000

people were receiving home support. And next year even more people will

receive home support. These are mainly elderly people who have just had

an operation or who are recovering from an illness and need a helping

hand for a while. Their local DHB had assessed them as needing some

help with things like vacuuming or laundry, grocery shopping or cooking a

meal.

When they're feeling better that home help is supposed to finish, which

frees up space for other people in need. People come on and off home

support all the time. I've had assurances from DHB chairs that no one will

be unsafe or forced from their own home by any changes to their home

support.

This year around 15,000 people who needed help started getting it and

around 15,000 who no longer needed it, stopped receiving home support.

District Health Boards put more money into home support this year than

they did last year, and they are planning to put even more money in next

year.

There have also been some concerns expressed about the telephone

assessment system many DHBs are using to gauge whether someone is

eligible for home support. That telephone assessment system is

internationally accredited. It has been piloted, funded and rolled out

nationally by the previous government. Such assessments usually take
20 - 30 minutes.

The National Government is also committed to improving life for the 34,000

people living in rest homes. We want them to enjoy high quality standards.

But there has been mounting public concern around issues of poor care in

some rest homes.

Late last year the Auditor General released a scathing report on the

monitoring of aged residential care in New Zealand. The report was an

indictment of neglect by the previous Labour Government.

The Auditor General was highly critical of the lack of action between 2002

and 2008. She found that the Ministry of Health struggled for years to

ensure the quality and safety of rest home service.

In fact, the Auditor General said the previous administration did not

respond quickly enough to address weaknesses and risks in auditing

arrangements that it had known about for some years. She criticised

duplicate monitoring by DHBs as diverting scarce resources from other

important monitoring work. And the Auditor General was especially critical

of the agencies that audit rest homes.

We have spent the time since the election dealing with the poor state of

monitoring we inherited.

One of our first actions when we took office was to begin improving the

auditing and monitoring of rest home services. The Auditor General's

report was in line with our thinking and it is helping us in our ongoing work

to address long standing poor performance in some rest home auditing.

We have introduced spot auditing of rest homes . . . meaning we don't give

weeks and weeks notice when such an audit is about to happen. And we

now require audit results be published in plain English on the Ministry of

Health's website. For the first time ever, family members and older people

can see and compare audit results of rest homes online. This will help

them know more about their options.

We also want designated auditing agencies to do a better job of inspecting

rest homes. The government has just introduced new rules that require

auditing agencies to be approved by an international agency - or they risk

losing their ability to provide audits. This is on top of the Ministry of Health

auditing rest home auditors as well, which started six months ago.

These tougher conditions will improve the auditing itself - and improve

transparency and confidence in the way rest homes are audited."

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