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The Voice of Penrith
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Thursday, January 30, 2025
BUSINESS DIRECTORY
NEWMARCH HORRORS COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED
“WE ARE SORRY” MIKLOS BOLZA & DUNCAN MURRAY
A
n aged care centre’s operator has apologised after a coroner found residents were left without medication, food and water during a deadly COVID-19 outbreak. The lives of some vulnerable aged care residents could have been saved during the devastating outbreak in 2020 that ripped through Newmarch House if not for missteps and leadership failures. Major service provider Anglicare last Friday offered a wide-reaching apology as a coroner handed down his damning findings after an inquest into the “unprecedented and devastating” deaths of 19 people at the Kingswood facility. Some of those deaths could have been
avoided had proper testing for the virus been implemented during the outbreak, NSW deputy state coroner Derek Lee found in his 344-page judgment. Residents were also left without medication, food and water during the breakdown in services, while senior executives were notable in their “almost complete absence” from the under-siege facility. Less than two months after the aged care centre entered lockdown in late March 2020, 37 residents and 34 staff members had contracted the virus. Transferring five residents could have saved their lives or improved the level of care they received, Lee said. Instead, management from the 102-bed facility opted to treat sick residents on-site under Hospital in The
Home (HITH), a clinical care service run by NSW Health. But that program was incompatible with managing an outbreak of an infectious disease such as COVID-19, the coroner said. There was no attempt to conduct site-wide PCR tests at the facility in the early days of the outbreak, a measure that would have identified positive cases faster and reduced the extent and severity of the spread. Information given to concerned families was generic rather than specific to their relatives and in some cases was “inaccurate or understated the seriousness of what was occurring”, Lee found. Frontline personnel also did not receive effective or direct support from senior executives at Anglicare during the outbreak. “The almost complete
absence, or only ‘occasional’ presence, of any senior executives at Newmarch House during the outbreak created confusion for frontline management personnel who became overwhelmed,” Lee said. While Anglicare took appropriate steps to ensure sufficient employees were available, changes to the definition of close contacts requiring self-isolation meant fewer staff were available than were anticipated. This resulted in a dire staff shortage that severely jeopardised infection control and resident care, the coroner found. “The evidence established that on occasion some residents were not administered regular medication, showered, or provided with nutrition and hydration,” Lee said in his findings. Story continued on » p. 9
Anglicare CEO Simon Miller. Photo: AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts.
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