If you have a family member in Bupa’s Pride of the Murray wing and they get sick, staff say it could easily get worse.
The same staff members say prolonged mismanagement of many residents by understaffed shifts has seen some of the community’s most vulnerable being left in their own excrement for hours at a time.
Another said illness anywhere else in the aged care facility means people are still at risk because the staffing has been cut back so far. At times as many as 40 residents are in the care of just one personal care assistant (PCA).
Apart from the appalling hygiene care that it caused, overloaded staff meant up to 25 per cent of residents were not being assisted properly, further damaging their already frail condition.
Qualified nurses, who are meant to be the primary caregivers, are frequently rostered on as shift care managers, meaning they wouldn’t see every resident in their shift time.
Staff risk losing their jobs, and say they face possible law suits, for coming forward to the media to tell what they call the horror of reality behind closed doors at the facility on the corner of Murray Valley Hwy and Fehring Lane.
They say they would rather be unemployed than continue to be complicit by their silence in this “institutionalised neglect”.
The whistleblowers said Bupa was also looking to cut staff numbers/hours further.
“The company also used COVID-19 as a smokescreen to cut back hours and services even further,” one carer said.
“That isn’t to say the COVID safe plans the company introduced were no good as well. They were, and still are, outstanding – but that’s really a one-off and would be underwritten by what this multinational saw happened in the UK, where it is headquartered,” Nurse A said.
“If that had happened here, it would have put too much attention on them.
“But closing the doors meant families could not come and see how their locked-down loved ones were really coping.
“It was tragic that a company could knowingly set up such systemic failure, despite staff coming in early to try and get some sort of shift handover to know what each resident has been like during the day or night.
“If you want to know why people are suffering unnecessarily, why people are ignored, even left hungry, you have to look at the whole aged care industry.
“At every other level of life, from daycare to kindergarten, through school and in all hospitals, there is a ratio of staff to children, students, patients, everything.
“Except aged care. Those sorts of parameters have been resisted in aged care forever because it would increase costs, and that’s how you end up with one person trying – and failing – to care for 40 people.
“No matter how skilled you are, or have been, you cannot provide even the most basic of assistance when managing 40 people, with everything from dementia to the bedridden.
“Some of your residents are also identified as people needing multiple carers to be effectively assisted, from turning them over in bed to basic necessities such as showering and going to the toilet.”
The carers the Riverine Herald spoke to said Bupa works on a ratio of one carer to at least 10 residents at some homes and they all agreed that was not a functioning model for the wellbeing of residents.
More from the Riverine Herald's Bupa investigation
Bupa responds to Echuca facility allegations
Federal Government responds to Bupa Echuca claims
Sexual harassment and other claims go "unheard" at Bupa Echuca
