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A BENDIGO aged care home has sought to reassure the community after it was found non-compliant with quality and safety standards.
Royal Freemasons Flora Hill was declared non-compliant after an assessment in March, with assessors citing issues such as medication errors and staff shortages.
It came months after the Kangaroo Flat Royal Freemasons was also found not to meet the standards.
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A Royal Freemasons spokesperson said the organisation wanted to reassure the community that its Flora Hill home remained fully accredited by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission.
They said Royal Freemasons was working on the non-compliances identified to make sure its residents received the highest level of care.
Earlier
A BENDIGO aged care home has been found non-compliant with quality and safety standards, with assessors citing issues such as medication errors and staff shortages.
Royal Freemasons Flora Hill was declared non-compliant after an assessment in March, just months after the Kangaroo Flat Royal Freemasons home was also found not to meet the standards.
Families of residents at both homes had raised concerns about staffing levels as early as July 2020, after Royal Freemasons announced a 6.5 per cent cut to rosters to alleviate "significant" financial strain. The home later said rosters would remain unchanged while Victoria was in a state of emergency.
A June report from the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission into the Flora Hill Royal Freemasons detailed a failure to manage risks around medication administration, saying low staff numbers were "impeding" quality of care.
The Flora Hill home was found non-compliant with personal and clinical care standards, human resource standards and organisational governance standards.
The report said in one instance a medication error caused a "significant negative outcome" for one resident of the home.
It said there were "deficiencies" in management's response to a resident receiving the wrong medication.
The report said records showed multiple medication error incidents in each month between December 2020 and February 2021.
It said the service was unable to show it had acted to give staff guidance to manage ongoing risks associated with medication management.
Auditors noted anomalies between residents' charts between the home's two medication management systems.
They also reported seeing an incident report which did not document any actions taken by Royal Freemasons to address the incident.
Auditors concluded the effect of medication error on one resident and their family, and the risks to other residents, was enough to find Royal Freemasons was not compliant with its personal and clinical care standards.
The report also found widespread dissatisfaction with staffing levels at the Flora Hill home.
Auditors said most residents considered they received quality care from staff who were knowledgeable, capable and caring.
But most also believed the service had a lack of staff, which was affecting the level of care provided.
Residents, their representatives, and staff at the home, nearly all believed low staff numbers were affecting the quality of care at the Flora Hill home, the report said.
It detailed instances of compromised hygiene, increased falls, delays in food service, care staff being asked to assist kitchen staff, and staff being removed from the lifestyle team to help with care duties.
Other news:
The auditors detailed an instance of a dinner service where no care staff were present, with only kitchen staff to assist residents.
The auditors acknowledged the home had shown some action to improve staffing, but said interviews and observation showed enough reason to find the service non-compliant.
Reporting on organisational governance, the auditors found Royal Freemasons was unable to show it had applied lessons from or managed risks associated with changing medication systems.
Auditors said the home's two medication systems - a new one was implemented in December 2020 - and multiple pharmaceutical suppliers had contributed to several medication errors, including missing medication and documentation not being up to date.
They acknowledged that the Royal Freemasons had shown it had taken some action to improve risk management processes. But the auditors said the service had not shown that it had appropriately investigated, mitigated or managed risks associated with the implementation of a new medication management system.
The report also said Royal Freemasons had failed to show it had appropriate procedures in place to make sure all abuse or neglect incidents were appropriately reported.
At the Kangaroo Flat home, assessors found in April there were "deficits" in care, failure to manage infection risk, and short staffing.
Royal Freemasons has been approached for comment.
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