The aged care sector is starting to collapse due to a near-catastrophic staffing crisis, a North Island provider says.
In Wellington and the Hutt Valley region, one provider is warning public hospital beds are scarce, and people who need high levels of care are being moved between rest homes or into public hospitals - when there is space available.
Enliven is a not-for-profit service running 14 rest homes as well as hospital and dementia care units.
Enliven Central general manager Nicola Turner said the hospital wing at Chalmers Home in New Plymouth was currently empty due to there being no registered nurses available to care for its residents.
"We had to ask the higher need people to move out. Some of them have been there for years, it's pretty traumatic for them. They certainly hope they can come back but whether that will happen, I don't know."
The Wellington region had one of the worst scenarios, with two other institutions having to re-home their residents this past week, she said.
"At the moment there are very few hospital places in the Wellington region ... We are already having to move some more residents around our homes because we are just running out of nurses. There's literally nowhere for people to go except sit in the acute hospital beds."
Last week, Stephanie Clare received a call from the Wellington home where her 72 year-old mum has spent the last 10 years.
"I went up for the emergency meeting with all my other family members from the home and the home said due to workforce shortage and a lack of nurses that they were giving us warning that they would have to close some of the beds ... which means that my mother needed to go somewhere else".
Clare said even though she was aware of the reality of the nursing shortage in New Zealand, the change for her mother had been abrupt.
"My mum has lived there for so long, they know how to look after her. They know her needs, they know her history. They have seen photographs of all the family, they know us so so well."
Aged Care Association president Simon Wallace said the workforce was short about 1000 registered nurses and demand for aged residential care was forecast to increase by an estimated 15,000 beds by 2030.
Five hundred hospital beds in aged care homes had to be closed in New Zealand in the past six months due to the lack of nursing workforce, he said.
"500 beds equals 500 older more vulnerable New Zealander that we have to find a place for in another rest home that might be in another town. It's 500 people that some of whom we have to send back to a public hospital. The result of this on the ground is that older people are being displaced and being uprooted often from where their families live and the community they have lived for a long time."
Radius Care managing director Brien Cree said the aged care sector was not able to pay their nurses as much as the DHBs.
"The pay between DHBs and age care sector has a chronic gap and it's causing significant shortage of carers. We have 40 thousand beds in New Zealand, and the DHBs have 13 thousand in total, so we are significantly bigger."
About 36,000 New Zealanders live in aged residential care and a further 75,000 receive home-based care.
Turner said a lot of the beds that had closed - even temporarily - might never run again.
"It's a major issue, the whole industry is collapsing now."
For Clare's family, moving her mother could mean longer journeys when visiting and a lot of discomfort in the process.
"It means that it's all new to me and could be more complicated for mum. It means that mum might be upset by the move and she feels further away from me. Means so many things at this time of her life".
In a statement, Hutt Valley and Capital & Coast DHBs Strategy, Planning & Performance acting director Peter Guthrie said they had only recently been formally advised of the closure - some of it temporary - of the aged residential care (ARC) beds.
Enliven Central hopes to start admitting newly graduated nurses again from September, after courses finish.
The Nurses Society in a statement said the aged care sector had considerable, long-standing shortages.
"It is caused by multiple factors. Pay rates and conditions are less attractive in the sector. There is less professional support. Professionally many nurses prefer to work in more acute and technical areas.
"The sector is heavily dependent on foreign educated nurses and many of these nurses use the aged care sector as a stepping stone to later transition into DHB employment, as their professional background in their country of origin was not aged care. Hence, they may well want to move to their normal clinical area of practice. Plus, DHB conditions are more attractive.
"Day to day work activities for nurses in the sector vary depending on position and setting, but it is generally planning and providing care, as well supervising health care assistants."
The statement said dealing shortages in staff requires employers to be more supportive and better employers, they need to listen to their staff and be responsive to their concerns.
"They need to moderate workload, including limiting resident/patient numbers if they do not have the staff. Salaries and other conditions need improving - closer to DHB and other sectors rates. Changes are needed in staff ratios with a higher proportion of RNs to healthcare assistants."
It said the shortfall may improve somewhat as the movement of internationally trained nurses returns to normal.
"Covid-19 has had a very big impact on the sector. This includes increased workload because of infection prevention and control protocols, the monitoring of residents/patients for Covid, meeting their increased psycho-social needs, and caring for those ill with Covid. Additionally dealing with stressed whanau. Plus staff absence through having Covid, being contacts and/or needing to care for family with Covid have added to staff shortages."
RNZ
