By RANKIN, Janine
Health board to end contract with Feilding’s Ranfurly Manor. —- —————- Neglect of elderly patients at Feilding’s Ranfurly Manor has prompted the MidCentral District Health Board to tell proprietor Ted Hewetson he won’t have a contract by December.
The director of Silvercare Ltd and husband of celebrity chef Annabel Langbein will get a letter telling him the contract to run the hospital and rest home will be terminated.
But board funding manager Mike Grant said he wanted to talk to Mr Hewetson about ways Ranfurly can stay in business after that.
“This does not mean Ranfurly necessarily has to close,” he said.
Cases of patients left without oxygen, others lying wet in their beds, and having to cry out for help when they fell because call systems didn’t work are catalogued in a board- commissioned report on the home.
It was the first time the board had terminated a contract with a rest home provider in the five years it has been responsible for residential aged care.
It’s a step Mr Grant describes as “significant”, after appointing a statutory manager, nurse Irene McLean, to help put systems in place to reduce the risks of serious harm to residents at Ranfurly in July.
But it had become clear Mr Hewetson was not playing an active part in finding solutions, he said.
“The issues in the rest home are systemic. We were after seeing some understanding of those issues, and a demonstration that they would overcome those issues and put in place the necessary resources to do that. That’s not been evidenced. We were not convinced.”
The board’s next priority was to find a permanent solution that would keep Ranfurly’s doors open.
Ranfurly is the largest provider of residential aged care services in the district, with 38 hospital and 12 rest home beds.
It was one of the facilities chosen by the board to take over care of residents when it closed Clevely Hospital in Feilding in 2005, on the basis that it had a proven track record.
Silvercare’s most recent Health Ministry certification to run Ranfurly for three years was cleared in February 2007.
But in July this year the Central Region’s technical advisory services auditors found there was a lack of leadership at Ranfurly that was placing residents and staff at risk of serious harm.
They were concerned the manager in charge since September last year had no clinical qualifications, and did not have the skills, resources or knowledge to manage the business and rest home.
Of the 40 staff, some had no contracts or job descriptions. At least six staff were directly related to the manager.
They found standards for infection control and keeping health records had been breached, and there were inadequate policies about the use of restraint.
The director should take a more active role in ensuring Ranfurly complied with a range of legal, contractual and industry standards, they said.
Mr Grant said the board wasn’t satisfied the director was doing all he could to act on that recommendation.
The board is also monitoring services at Karina Rest Home in Palmerston North, operated by a related company, Silvercare Management Ltd, of which Mr Hewetson is a director.
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(c) 2008 Evening Standard; Palmerston North, New Zealand. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.
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