F
Florence Nightingale
People and profits in equal measure
I am a nurse with considerable experience in health including aged care I recommended BlueCare to family members based on the assumption that they were a larger organisation with better resourcing people etc and mostly positive reviews at the time I was disappointed with the quality of service care NB I concede that The clients were not easiest to deal with however as far as I could see the service provided was NOT person-centred There was little evidence of care planning or traditional case-management The clients also struggled with the administrative complexity surrounding the provision of services and having to deal with constantly changing carers The financial contract was approx 30 pages long compared to the care plan which comprised just 2 pages and x3 care goals which didn t reflect the complexity of the care required even referred nor revised This disparity speaks volumes - money over service and care And because there was no care plan there were constant tussles over how things should should not be done threats of withdrawal of service etc A mutually agreed upon comprehensive nursing care plan administered in partnership by the case-manager and spouse who in this case was the primary carer would have served as a resource to ALL while providing much needed continuity of care That s how we did it in the ole days before the business men arrived on the health care scene and financial decisions started taking precedence over care decisions Attendant to this was the pressure to have a custom-made wheelchair which eventually cost x3 the quoted price Pressure to purchase a new bed costing 000s was resisted because of the wheel chair aberration and unclear why it was needed It was an utter relief when the client eventually went into care Much of the above argy-bargy may have been avoided if a proper case management approach had been taken and equal importance afforded care and financial management People and profits in equal measure This is my second horrible experience with a faith-based NGO Hopefully there won t be a third I eagerly await the outcome of the royal commission And to my nursing colleagues out there honour and respect your nursing knowledge so that others might do similarly