I am aware of community concerns that have been raised about the quality of care provided at the Lyndoch Nursing Home.
These concerns have been passed onto the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission. The Commission, the independent regulator of aged care, has been closely monitoring the quality of care at the service.
The Commission’s role is to accredit, assess and monitor aged care subsidised by the Australian Government, both residential and in-home care aged care services, and also resolve complaints about these services.
The Commission has in recent years been strengthened to ensure it is equipped to monitor aged care services and take appropriate action where it identifies non-compliance, to maintain a high standard of aged care services.
The Commission has undertaken a number of activities, including unannounced site visits, at the Lyndoch Nursing Home in 2020 and 2021, which resulted in issues being identified at the service.
The Provider has current notices of non-compliance at two of its services, Lyndoch Nursing Home and the May Noonan Centre, located in Terang.
The notice to Lyndoch Nursing home was issued on 2 November 2021 and relates to three standards (Standard 3 – Personal care and clinical care, Standard 7 – Human and Resources, and Standard 8 – Organisational governance).
The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission (Commission) has advised that it has received 43 complaints about Lyndoch since 1 July 2021.
The Commission has been working with the Provider to address these complaints. The main themes of the complaints have been around personnel, health care and consultation.
The Commission has also undertaken a further unannounced site visit in April 2022 to perform a reaccreditation site audit.
This involved a team of quality assessors from the Commission attending the service unannounced to conduct a comprehensive audit of the service against all 42 requirements of the Aged Care Quality Standards.
The outcome of this reaccreditation site audit is pending.