The aged care sector has formed an industry task force to deal with the challenges posed by Covid-19, and is now bringing in restrictions on visitors in line with Ministry of Health pandemic safety protocols.
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Some 43,000 New Zealanders live in retirement villages, with another 39,500 in aged residential care, including rest homes, hospitals and dementia facilities.
Bupa is the country’s largest aged care provider with 34 retirement villages, 48 care homes and seven rehabilitation sites. Its managing director Carolyn Cooper said Bupa was starting to restrict access to visitors.
“The key thing for us is restricting access at the moment, and that doesn't mean locking out families, but very much restricting them, making sure that there is a health declaration in place.
“And also, there’s usual things like making sure that we've got the supplies that we might need should there be an outbreak, that we've got really good notices for families, and we've also increased our staff training,” she said.
If someone has self-declared they have been overseas they can’t visit a resident in person but are encouraged to remain in contact by phone or video chat, she said.
Bupa is also helping staff look after their own health, Cooper said.
“We're making sure that we're doing updates on all the hand hygiene and the precautions training and making sure that they've got the equipment that they might need.
“And also, just providing that level of reassurance that we're supporting them. Bupa is also providing the ability for people to take leave and be paid if they need to,” she said.
Planning for possible staff shortages is also on the table, Cooper told Nine to Noon.
“We will be doing scenario testing to see if we've got reduced staff, what that actually means. Because we don't know whether we'll be able to get that workforce.
“The other thing we're doing is working on a plan to engage with some of the industries that may be affected by a downturn, to actually look at what opportunities we have to work with them.”
That could mean bringing in people to help with non-frontline activities, she said, such as catering.
John Collyns, executive director of the Retirement Villages Association, said at this stage retirement villages were striking a balance between the safety of residents and keeping life going as normally as possible.
“Operators are working very hard to strike that balance and get it right, because our residents are still at home after all, and we've got to make sure that they are able to be safe and are able to live happily in that village.”
His members are screening visitors using a verbal check, he said.
“We check to see whether they've been overseas recently, who they're going to see, and the purpose of the visit.
“Just making sure that they're fit and healthy before they come in. And once they pass all those screening tests, then of course, they're welcome to visit their relatives or the resident.”
However, other activities in the residential care sector have been scaled back, he said.
“The association’s suspended all our regional forums which are traditionally held in elder villages.
“Villages are stopping inter-village visits for bowling trips, and that sort of thing. A number of villages are restricting social events and taking very strong precautions around open days and sales events.”
The newly-formed industry taskforce which includes all the sector’s biggest operators is meeting weekly, he said.
“One of the things we've done is we've put together a fact sheet for residents which explains to them what self-isolation looks like for them in a village and the sort of steps that they need to do.
“And we've also put together a fact sheet or guidelines for our member operators, to explain to them what they need to do in matters of self-isolation,” Collyns said.
Esther Perriam is director of Eldernet an information provider about services for older people which also works closely with DHBs.
She said that at this stage no facility in New Zealand was in lock-down, but pandemic planning was well established and understood in the sector.
“New Zealand is world class when it comes to aged care and retirement villages. Both sectors are fairly heavily audited, especially the aged care sector, and those audits do cover things like pandemic planning.”
Maintaining essential supplies is a big part of that planning, she said, and the Canterbury earthquakes gave the sector valuable insights into how to achieve this.
“I suspect that all of these companies will have a very strong relationship with providers who will be holding on to supply for them, because as we've already mentioned, the people that the aged care facilities service are from what we have seen, the most vulnerable for complications from Covid-19.”
