A support worker has been found in breach of the Code of Disability Services Consumers’ Rights after failing to attend to an elderly man in her care who died days after being found unconscious following a fall.
The elderly man, aged in his 80s, was living alone and received in-home support services from a community health service in 2018, which included personal care every day.
The support worker, who worked for the community health service, claimed she had attended her scheduled Saturday session with the man at his home. However, GPS data showed she was not located at or around the man’s home at the time of the session but was instead at her own home, Deputy Health and Disability Commissioner Rose Wall said today in her report.
The following day, another support worker attended but the man failed to answer the door. The man’s next of kin was then contacted and the community health service advised that the support worker could leave if there were no concerns.
On Monday, a different support worker attended but again, the man did not answer the door. The support worker gained entry to the house, where they found the man unconscious on the floor in a distressed state.
He was admitted to hospital but died shortly afterwards.
"This report highlights the importance of home-support workers attending their scheduled appointments with clients, many of whom are very vulnerable," Wall said.
Wall said she was unable to comment on whether a visit by the man’s support worker would have resulted in him being found sooner, as the “clinical documentation was not sufficiently clear to determine precisely when the man may have fallen”.
However, Wall criticised the health service’s investigation into the incident and the family’s concerns, which she called “inadequate, delayed and piecemeal”.
Despite the man’s family contacting the community health service following his death, the service did not treat the enquiry as a complaint, and determined that no further investigation into the family’s questions was needed.
The health service interviewed the support worker six months after the incident following a complaint to the Health and Disability Commission, where they found discrepancies in the support worker’s information.
Wall made a number of recommendations, including that the health service consider whether the support worker could benefit from further training on logging her attendance, and that the worker provide a written apology to the man’s family.
She also recommended that the health service consider the routine monitoring or random audit of staff attendance at clients’ homes, and that they report back on the creation of a dashboard to easily identify when a support worker has logged into a client visit from a location other than the client’s house.
The health service will also report back to the Health and Disability Commission over its engagement with an external specialist to develop and deliver more detailed training on the management of complaints, investigations, and privacy.
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