Facility fills aged-care gap
A NEW $30 million residential aged-care facility in Douglas is filling a critical need in the care of the elderly and infirm while also helping to ease pressure on the Townsville Hospital.
The operators of the 140bed facility, called Protea by Prescare, opened the complex to the media yesterday.
Protea manager Rick van Groningen said the facility would fill a crucial gap in services.
“Townsville has a strong demand for high quality aged care and for many years the hospital has had to fill a gap,” Dr van Groningen said.
“There are people in the hospital (where) there’s no other place for them to go. As a result the backlog goes all the way through to the emergency department and to ambulance ramping.
“So by offering more beds, which are only available by licence through the Government, we can effectively take 140 people out of the current hospital situations.
“It frees up the acute hospital for what it was intended to do.”
Kevin Saville, 90, and his wife Doreen, 84, currently live in a unit in Aitkenvale and will be among the first residents to move into the facility.
Mr Saville said he thought Protea was “terrific”.
“My wife is 84 years. Of course it’s getting too much for her now, cooking and everything like that. The sooner we move into the place the better,” Mr Saville said.
Mrs Saville said it would be nice to have more help with her husband’s care. “It’s a big step but you come to a time when you know you are ready,” she said.
“It will be lovely just to sit back and sort of not have to do anything,” Mrs Saville said.
The five-level complex has a 20-bed special care unit for people with dementia and 120 beds providing medium and high level care, along with services such as a gymnasium, rooftop garden and cafe and hairdressing salon.
The charge for a standard room was a $350,000 deposit, which was fully refundable, although Dr van Groningen said some concessional rates would be offered.
The facility would employ 150 people including registered and enrolled nurses, personal care workers, lifestyle co-ordinators, catering officers, housekeeping staff and laundry attendants. Dr van Groningen said the facility would adopt the approach of a clinician rather than accountant.
“We are staffing our facility on acuity, which means the need of the individual, rather than on ratios, so if a particular (accommodation) island requires a lot of staff, we’ll have a lot of staff, not based on a mathematical formula,” Dr van Groningen said
Dr van Groningen said this approach gave the professionals more opportunity to practice their skills.