Disabled badly treated in homes, report says

Severely disabled people received shoddy medical care in understaffed residential homes run by the Cerebral Palsy Society, according to an internal Health Ministry report.

The internal report criticised residential homes run by the Cerebral Palsy Society's business arm, Focus, for unsafe conditions, including medical mistreatment and understaffing.

In one incident, a resident choked to death while no staff were present.

The company was also forced to repay $2.5 million to the Ministry of Health after audits revealed "abnormal profit-taking", another report revealed today.

For the eight months the auditor could find data, it was reported that Focus 2000 overcharged by 69,000 hours -- or 3400 hours a fortnight.

However, Focus chief executive Anne Murphy said none of the complaints of mistreatment were justified and said the reports were "totally biased".

And the Health Ministry's deputy director of disability services, Geraldine Woods, said if there had been any suspicion of wrongdoing, police or the coroner would have been informed and that did not happen.

She said she was certain any such incident would have been thoroughly investigated at the time and due process followed.

"The incidences that were highlighted were isolated," she told National Radio.

"This is a big organisation and it provides care to a lot of people. People die in homes, they are fragile individuals.

"If there was any suspicion of anything untoward, then police would have been involved and the coroner."

Ms Woods agreed it was "extremely serious" that family members had expressed universal distrust in Focus 2000, which was why the ministry had been keeping a closer eye on the service for the last two years.

"But we don't stop a service just because we get a complaint. We certainly investigate.

"Many people are very happy with the service they're getting, and just because some people are unhappy doesn't mean to say that we should disrupt the lives of all the other people.

Ms Woods said she did not want to take money away from providing services to waste money in "constantly auditing".

Each service provider is expected to be audited at least once every three to five years.

She added on the profit-taking: "Following the audit, $2.5 million was refunded to the Ministry of Health and District Health Boards from Focus 2000 Ltd in December 2004."

She said in the case of Focus 2000, the amount of overcharging was "extraordinary in terms of the volume around it"

Ms Murphy said: "We have an official complaints procedure and never once was that complaints procedure used [in this instance], otherwise we would have investigated."

She questioned why the reports had become public knowledge at this point in time and why some statements in the report had apparently gone unchallenged.

- NZPA