Close eye kept on rest home vacancies

Wanganui's district health board will continue to monitor the availability of rest home beds for elderly in the city and district.

This follows the recent closure of the Aubert Home of Compassion and the loss of age care beds that has created.

Tracey Schiebli, service and business planning general manager for the Whanganui District Health Board, warned the board's community and public health advisory committee that bed availability in the future would become an issue.

"We're going to have get our collective thinking caps on at some stage," Ms Schiebli said.

The latest assessment of available beds showed there were 18 rest home beds on hand, two beds in hospital care facilities, another four were "flexible" (could be used for hospital and rest home level care), and a total of 15 beds in dementia units.

Ms Schiebli said while the Home of Compassion shutdown had had an impact on the number of hospital-level beds in the region, "contingencies have been put in place to manage this in the medium term".

"This includes supporting the reconfiguration of beds by aged care providers with both hospital and rest home level care, additional capacity of rest home care in apartments, and the development of a decision framework for entry into aged residential care, which includes a prioritisation process," she said.

She said the board had been working closely with both Hospice Wanganui and Access Ability to mitigate against any short-term bed shortage.

Ms Schiebli said that in future, if there were fewer than five vacancies across all levels of care in the district or a waiting list developed, it would trigger a priority process.

Among other things, priority would go to those living at home who could not safely be supported there, if a spouse was in aged residential care within the district or if they had been placed in care outside the district when their first choice was placement in Wanganui.

"This is consistent with contingency planning in other DHB regions, most of whom have never been in the fortunate position of having surplus bed capacity.

"In the medium to long term, the DHB expects the market will respond to increased demand for aged residential care services and that more beds will be available by early next year," Ms Schiebli said.