NURSING homes these days offer top-ups of standard services. Such top-ups vary across facilities and can be anything, such as toiletries, upgraded meal choices, massages and entertainment. Problem is in many cases residents are forced to buy these services and they are charged against their nursing home bonds.
THE home care waiting list continues to be laughably long and reductions are overwhelming due to people dying. Government action achieves marginal improvements only.
THE notion of a reportable assault implies that there assaults which need not be reported. But shouldn't the official report in which reportable assaults are reported report on what may have caused the rate of reportable assaults to skyrocket?
THE Minister denies he is trying to privatise aged care assessment in Australia, saying he is merely putting it out to open tender and, oh, the Aged Care Royal Commission supports this. The Royal Commission once again begged to differ.
ASKING medical specialists to be open about how much they charge is a reasonable demand. Expecting them to do so was always going to be pointless as a website developed for the purpose of fee comparison shows.
RESEARCH led by Advance Care Planning Australia found almost a third of Advance Care Directives (ACDs) audited in Australian residential aged care facilities to be invalid and unable to be used to guide treating doctors.
INVOCARE, one of the largest funeral providers in Australia, has taken the idea of being late for your own funeral to the next level and assumed that, even if you're not late, it will charge you a late fee!
Cheques are checking out and king cash is thinking about abdication, but we're not quite there yet.
HERE are some of the retirement income changes that will come in in 2020 with older people now on Newstart moving to the equally miserly and misleadingly named Jobseeker Allowance.
IT doesn't tell us anything anyone following this issue doesn't know, but the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) report looking into the issue of retirees downsizing from the family home into something smaller gives a good overview of the reasons people do and don't downsize.
Successive Governments have neglected aged care and turned it into the mess it is today. The measures announced by the Prime Minister on 25 November 2019 only seem to take the waiting list for the Home Care Packages program seriously. A detailed analysis of the Home Care Package measure.
The Aged Care Royal Commission's interim Report Neglect has left absolutely no wriggle room for Government and industry to pretend that the aged care system is sound at heart. Yes, there is a systemic problem. In fact, there are many. Consumer organisations in the ageing arena must now show their mettle and stand should to shoulder with the Royal Commission, insisting on reform that benefits the people who need care.
The Department of Health is taking early action to maximise the number of Home Care Packages.
Aged care is in terrible shape, but how much would it cost to rehabilitate it? An estimate.
On 11 July 2019, sixty-nine residents at the Earle Haven nursing home on the Gold Coast were evacuated without warning due to a commercial dispute between the approved provider and the subcontractor actually providing the care.
For ordinary Australians to have a chance of a retirement as adequately funded as retirements in The Netherlands and Denmark, the compulsory contribution rate needs to go up to 12 per cent pronto.
Not only is Newstart set at a rate which can't sustain life, the Government wants to absolutely make sure that you've spent your last cent before giving it you.
During the great franking credit debate much was made of retail and industry funds' ability to still fully utilise franking credits, something your typical SMSF would not have been able to do had the new policy been implemented. Turns out retail and industry funds can't as a rule be bothered with franking credits and anything to do with income tax.
Doctors tend not to be all that keen on Advance Care Directives. It is prudent to assume that they will take any excuse to ignore your Advance Care Directive if they think they have a better idea.
Approximately half the home care waiting list will die waiting for care even though the numbers on it have fallen for the first time. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of packages remain in administrative limbo.