BATHURST CPSA and the Bathurst community scored a big win on 21 October 2012 when the first Bathurst Bullet left Bathurst Station for Sydney Central Railway, but the story does not end there. Bathurst has continued to lobby and now a second Bathurst Bullet has been announced. This is great news and again a great win!
AS a result of indexation, pension payments including the Age Pension, the Disability Support Pension and the Carer Payment have increased by $9.90 a fortnight to $926.20 for singles, and by $14.80 a fortnight to $1,396.20 for couples.
EVERYBODY remembers the old ABBA song asking that question and THE VOICE can finally reveal why that call is not being made now that your home phone is going through the NBN.
HAVE you been to the chemist lately and been told that your usual generic, cheaper prescriptions are not available and that you will need to shell out for brand prescriptions?
THE National Palliative Care Strategy 2018 has been launched for implementation over a five-year period. All Australian Health Ministers have signed the Strategy, but how worthwhile is it.
ACCORDING to an annual report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, in 2017–18 about 874,000 patients joined the public hospital elective surgery waiting lists. This was just under one per cent higher than the previous year, which doesn't sound like much but which masks some pretty horrible facts.
There are just over 207,000 nursing home places in Australia, but only 187,000 of those places are filled, 20,000 are vacant. The nursing home occupancy rate is in free-fall. It’s just over 90 per cent when it used to be 98 per cent. Meanwhile there are 96,000 people who have been approved for a nursing home place, but they’re not taking up their approval.
FROM 1 July 2019 reporting of clinical quality indicators for all Australian Government subsidised residential aged care providers will be mandatory. Mandatory is the important word, because generally speaking aged care providers do nothing on a voluntary basis.
A REPORT called Older people living well with in-home support tells the stories of forty people who receive aged care at home. The Report was prepared by consultancy Research Matters through an Australian Government grant. While most of the people taking part in the study acknowledged that without in-home support they would not be able to continue living at home, or only with the greatest difficulty, their comments demonstrated that in-home support as a care system needs a lot of work.
THERE are more than 307,000 Age Pensioners in Australia who rent privately and receive Commonwealth Rent Assistance. More than a third of those (104,000) live in NSW, where they are five per cent of the two million or so private renters.