Aged care news highlights from the week ending 21 January 2022, aggregated by CompliSpace.

The information in the Weekly Wrap is aggregated from other news sources to provide you with news that is relevant to the aged care sector across Australia and worldwide. Each paragraph is a summary of the subject matter covered in the particular news article. The information does not necessarily reflect the views of CompliSpace.

Coronavirus/COVID-19 News

COVID-19 vaccination boosters in residential aged care facilities

According to the Department of Health, the Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services and the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commissioner have today issued a joint letter to residential aged care providers to personally encourage all aged care residents and staff to get their COVID booster vaccination. There are several options available for approved providers to access boosters for residents and staff:

• Commonwealth in-reach vaccination clinics
• self-managed clinics by providers
• local health service in-reach vaccination (where available)
• individual resident GPs or onsite primary care clinics
• through community pharmacies.

You can read the letter from Minister Colbeck and Commissioner Anderson and please share the letter with your residents and staff.

Preparing for a COVID-19 Outbreak

According to the Department of Health, due to the increasing COVID-19 cases across the country, all residential aged care providers are strongly encouraged to prepare for the possibility of COVID-19 exposure or an outbreak in their facility.

Distribution of Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs) for Residential Aged Care

A bulk dispatch of RATs is underway for all residential aged care facilities with an active COVID-19 outbreak or exposure.

An allocation of RATs will be delivered directly to residential aged care facilities in scope for this dispatch. Deliveries are expected to occur over the period from 19 January to 27 January 2022. The majority of kits being distributed are CTK Biotech On-Site Self-Tests Other RAT brands may also be distributed.

RAT allocations are based on your My Aged Care Portal reported staff and resident figures and assume daily testing for staff and twice weekly testing for residents. Tests can also be used for partners in care and regular visitors where needed.

If you have reported an outbreak or exposure to the Department of Health on or after 16 January please complete the outbreak or exposure online form to request RATs and personal protective equipment (PPE). There is no requirement for facilities who reported an outbreak prior to 16 January to submit an online order.

Personal Protective Equipment

It is critical that residential aged care facilities carefully monitor their PPE supplies, take proactive steps to bolster supplies to make sure they have sufficient PPE on hand. Due to the extremely high demand for PPE, providers should contact their usual suppliers in the first instance, rather than make a request through the National Medical Stockpile (NMS), if the need for PPE supplies is not urgent or critical.

The National Medical Stockpile is prioritising the immediate distribution of PPE to residential aged care facilities that currently have a COVID-19 outbreak or exposure.

Please note that the current high level of demand for PPE is extending timeframes for delivery and providers are encouraged to place orders at least 5 working days ahead of that date that you will require the additional PPE or RATs.

The process for ordering PPE for outbreak sites has also been made faster and simpler. To place your order, please complete the online form. Orders placed through the online form can be processed more quickly. Please do not submit orders via email to your Commonwealth Case Manager.

Support with costs

Through the COVID-19 Aged Care Support Program Extension Grant (GO4863), providers will be supported with additional eligible costs of managing the direct impact of COVID-19. The grant reimburses providers for additional eligible costs including:

• increased staffing costs in a facility with residents/clients who are infected or isolated due to COVID-19
• increased costs to replace existing staff who are infected or isolated due to COVID-19
• the purchase of additional PPE and RATs
• the purchase of additional products and services to manage cleaning and infection control
• equipment and resources
• waste removal costs.

For more information please see the Grant Opportunity Guidelines (Grant Opportunity – GO4863) and the regularly updated frequently asked questions available on GrantConnect.

Unions call for defence force to support aged care workers

According to Aged Care Insite, peak unions and providers have called for the Australian Defence Force to assist workers struggling with rampant COVID-19 outbreaks and staff shortages. In a joint statement, the Australian Aged Care Collaboration (AACC) urged the Prime Minister to deploy the ADF to assist “overwhelmed” aged care staff.

Consumer peak concerned for aged care residents’ rights

According to Aged Care Guide, the Older Persons Advocacy Network (OPAN), peak body for older Australians, is calling on Governments and the aged care sector to ensure all older people in nursing homes are receiving the best support possible during the new COVID-19 Omicron variant crisis.

COVID-19 super spreader variant causing havoc in aged care sector

According to Aged Care Guide, with the aggressive spread of the new COVID-19 variant, Omicron, and the Government's new attempt at a COVID-normal approach, aged care facilities around Australia are experiencing unprecedented workforce and equipment shortages across the board.

I’m fully vaccinated against COVID-19 – now what?

According to NPS Medicinewise: so, you’re fully vaccinated. Find out more about what this means and how much risk you face from the COVID-19 virus and its variants. The information in this article reflects current evidence and may change as more becomes known about current and new vaccines, as well as emerging variants.

Other News

New retirement village regulations in every state: operators to see operational and compliance costs rise in 2022

According to The Weekly Source, village operators across NSW, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland are facing a significant increase in the costs of meeting regulatory requirements this year as the states pursue a raft of legislative reviews.

Smaller ageless communities predicted for care design

According to Australian Ageing Agenda, small-scale aged care homes and integrated ageless communities are among predicted themes that came out of a workshop on the future design of aged care.

The Ageing Mosaic - Support for LGBTI+ people

OPAN is hosting this webinar to explore strategies to assist aged care service providers to better understand how they can support older LGBTI+ people.

11:30 am - 12:30 pm AEDT, Tuesday 1 February

Mental health support for health professionals

According to Hospital and Healthcare, Black Dog Institute (BDI) is seeing an increase in support for health professionals since Omicron, with the service recording the highest user numbers from health professionals in the last 5 months.

Fixing Australia’s ‘broken’ rural aged care system

According to Aged Care Insite, Aged care policy experts are calling on the federal and state government to introduce a stewardship based model to fix the nation's rural, regional and remote aged care sector. Recent figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare show that over half of older Australians living outside of cities will travel hundreds of kilometres to access residential care.

Government releases overview of new home care program

According to Community Care Review, the Support at Home program will bring all in home aged care providers under one funding model, a new paper has revealed. The Federal Government has released its Support at Home Program Overview paper, which outlines what the program design could look like, including assessment, services, funding arrangements and care management. The new program will start in July 2023 and will replace the Commonwealth Home Support Programme (CHSP) Home Care Packages (HCP) Program and Short Term Restorative Care (STRC) Programme.

Legislation

Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Vaccination Information) Principles 2022 [CTH] – commenced 21 Jan 2022

This instrument amends the Accountability Principles 2014 and the Records Principles 2014 to impose requirements on approved providers of residential care, certain flexible and home care services to keep records and report to the Secretary of the Department of Health (Secretary) how many service staff have informed them that they have received a “booster dose” of a COVID-19 vaccination.