AS food quality and nutrition in nursing homes comes into sharper focus, more than one in five Hunter Central Coast residential care services have reported spending $10 or less per day per resident on fresh food. Login or signup to continue reading Figures compiled exclusively for the Newcastle Herald reveal that 25 of the region's 110 nursing homes failed to meet the benchmark in the two years to June 12, 2024. Of those, seven services reported spending less than $6 per day per resident on fresh food.
It follows a study of more than 700 residents at 10 facilities in NSW, South Australia and Queensland that this week revealed 32 per cent were malnourished and six per cent were severely malnourished. The Department of Aged Care has referred 753 services to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission that reported spending less than $10 per day per resident on fresh food and ingredients in the past two years. Of those, 188 spent less than $6 per day.
The commission uses departmental data as well as complaints, performance assessments, quality indicator data and resident experience surveys to determine a "risk-based proportionate response" to concerns about food, nutrition and "the dining experience". Regionally-specific data for the Hunter Central Coast, provided under Freedom of Information legislation, reveals that only one of the 25 under-performing services had a targeted assessment contact, but all have undergone a performance assessment during the two-year period. The Age.