KEY POINTS:
Rest homes that fall below national standards face being publicly identified in a new league table.
The Ministry of Health revealed yesterday - a week after an elderly woman's mouth was taped shut at an Auckland rest home - that it intends to put a list of certified rest homes on its website, as is done overseas.
At present, people can phone the ministry to be told if a rest home has a certificate and its duration. No further details are available publicly.
The proposed league table follows the Health and Disability Commissioner's new practice, since Tuesday, of naming all providers found to have breached the code of health and disability service consumers' rights, unless there is good reason not to.
The providers operating New Zealand's more than 700 residential facilities for the aged must have a ministry certificate. Usually it runs for three years, but can be for less if auditors identify problems under the Health and Disability Sector Standards.
Belhaven Rest Home, where the woman's mouth was taped up by a staff member who considered her too noisy, was on a two-year certificate because of issues with staff education and the management.
The Auckland District Health Board intervened at Belhaven this week under the aged residential care funding contract, appointing a temporary manager because of "significant concerns regarding clinical governance". The ministry has a review under way and the police are investigating the incident as an alleged assault.
The commissioner's office received 84 complaints about rest homes in the past 12 months. This was 11 per cent of all complaints against provider organisations, a proportion that has changed little in recent years.
Deputy commissioner Rae Lamb said yesterday that the incidents involved in the small number of cases in which consumers' rights had been breached included falls, pressure sores, inadequate assessments, lack of teamwork and medication errors.
"The very worst cases, and we've had a couple, are where there's been a cover-up."
The Belhaven incident has highlighted the training and pay of rest home caregivers - $13.15 an hour on average and often as low as $12.55.
Auckland University aged-care expert Dr Matthew Parsons and colleagues wrote in the Medical Journal in 2005 that caregivers and other healthcare assistants in rest homes had no registration authority, professional code of ethics or legally enforceable professional codes of practice.
"It is also a low-income workforce, and a significant number in the Auckland region have English as a second language."
But they found that a course of 10 training sessions led to a "significant increase in the proportion of care that was judged appropriate and adequate".
The rest home industry's representative group says many caregivers do receive training.
* The ministry phone number for certification inquiries is 0800 113813.
