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BREATHLESS and suffering a terminal illness, Kylie Kilroy was moved out of her aged care home after she complained on social media about the food and conditions.
Now she’s having to manage her final days in her own home hooked up to a portable oxygen tank.
Mrs Kilroy told News Corp Australia’s Aged Care 360 investigation the Toowoomba home in regional
Queensland rationed her morphine — delivering it only once every four to five hours instead of the prescribed twohourly dose — and also even rationed access to incontinence pads.
The gentleman in the room next to her kept falling out of bed and was yelling in pain, she said.
“There was not enough staff at all. They were just running. They’d literally run pushing me in the wheelchair to the toilet, put me on the toilet, race off and do something else and then I’ll have to buzz for them to come back to get me off the toilet,” Mrs Kilroy, 55, said. Despite her alleged treatment at the home, Mrs Kilroy said: “I feel sorry for the staff, you know.”
She was placed in the Tricare home earlier this year as an overflow patient from the local hospital with a terminal lung condition. Then she was moved back into Toowoomba Hospital after she tweeted pictures of the unappetising food. “There was nothing nutritious about it, it was gross, the mashed potato was the packet stuff, wasn’t fresh, the beans in that picture — they’re not even green, they’ve been boiled rotten.”
Mrs Kilroy said she lost 4kg after entering the home and weighed just 38 kilos. Asked why she went public, she said: “I just shared how I was feeling that morning. I was just rock bottom and I just put out the tweet. And I didn’t mention Tricare or anything and it was just this was how I was feeling.”
Her Twitter handle does not reveal her identity and she was surprised to learn her local MP, John Mcveigh, the federal member for the southwest Queensland electorate of Groom, whom she hadn’t contacted, had forwarded the tweet to the home’s administration.
She felt intimidated when Tricare questioned her about her complaints and said they would “contact the hospital”. “At that stage I just thought, well I didn’t even feel safe staying now,” she said.
Dr Mcveigh said although his office had not been contacted directly, he “became aware on 29 July of a public Twitter feed that included serious allegations of poor service in what was identified to us as a local aged care facility”.
“In line with formal protocols, we were obliged to immediately contact the facility to put those public allegations to them and promptly referred the matter to the Aged Care Quality & Safety Commission and the Office of the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians,” he said.
“On Friday 31st July, we also referred separate anonymous allegations received about the same facility from other parties late on Thursday 30th July,” he said.
His office had since received confirmation that the commission has followed up on those referrals, he said.
Tricare director Peter O’shea said “the Aged Care Act prohibits Tricare from disclosing protection information of current or previous recipients of our residential aged care, consequently we cannot discuss matters in connection with the individual you refer to.”