Aged care on life support
As Budget Day approaches, our agedcare facilities around New Zealand face closing beds or closing altogether, displacing older, vulnerable Kiwis from what are their homes.
The Government has failed the sector in previous Budgets and, unless it steps up in this year on May 19, these closures and displacements will continue.
The priority is delivering pay parity for registered nurses (RNs) working in agedcare facilities with their peers in public hospitals.
The Government’s failure to act on this means that every day our facilities are losing dozens of RNs, primarily to district health boards, because they control the budgets, and they can pay their nurses significantly more than our nurses.
Currently, our sector has a shortage of around 1000 nurses – about 20% of the sector – a situation that’s getting worse by the day. As a result, we’ve seen nearly 500 beds closed – our providers would rather close beds than compromise the quality of care.
That’s not good for our older people. It’s not good for their families, because people are having to move out of communities and away from areas they’re familiar with. And it means jobs are lost, sometimes in rural and remote areas of the country.
The Government needs to deliver pay parity urgently. Aged-care nurses currently earn around $10,000 to $15,000 a year less and that gap will more than double with the current pay offer on the table between DHBs and the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO).
Don’t get me wrong. We welcome investment in public hospital nurses, because it shows the Government values them. But the Government pays the salaries of aged-care nurses as well and, once the offer is settled, it will be paying our aged-care nurses a staggering $22,000 to $33,000 less than a public hospital nurse.
We have had many discussions since 2020 with the Government about the pay disparity and other funding issues for the sector. Indeed, one of the first commitments Health Minister Andrew Little made to us was that he would deliver pay parity.
There has been no action. So the latest pay deal for DHB nurses is a kick in the guts.
T here is no reason for this mindblowing disparity. Indeed, a scoping exercise in 2020 between the sector, DHBs and the Ministry of Health found the performance of an aged-care nurse comparable to a nurse working in a DHB. It could even be argued an aged-care nurse’s role is more challenging and demanding, given they don’t have doctors or specialists on hand, and lead teams of healthcare assistants and other support workers like activity co-ordinators and diversional therapists.
We are thankful to the Government for the measures put in place to protect New Zealanders and save lives because of the pandemic. But our nurses have done a remarkable job too in protecting the health and wellbeing of our older people. So it really hurts when that effort is ignored.
We need this Government to step up in this Budget. We need more investment and training for our nurses now. We know there are New Zealanders who want to train to be aged-care nurses, but there aren’t the financial incentives to do so.
Immigration settings support internationally qualified nurses (IQNs) to come into New Zealand, but we need to make it easy for their families to come with them.
Our sector relies heavily on IQNs, around a half of the aged-care nursing workforce, so it’s critical we smooth their pathway here.
New Zealand hasn’t done that. It hasn’t done that in the past, and we are concerned about what the upcoming ‘‘immigration reset’’ being talked about will bring. We hope there will be some good to come out of that.
The situation is getting worse and, unfortunately, we are seeing older people displaced. Sometimes they’re being sent back to a public hospital, and that’s not where any of us want those people to be.
Every day the Government fails to act, it devalues the care of older New Zealanders, and that’s simply not good enough.
We’re pinning our hopes on the future of their care in this Budget, and Minister Little following through on his promises.