Fed: NSW, Vic worst for not turning bed allocation into places

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Fed: NSW, Vic worst for not turning bed allocation into places

By Sandra O'Malley

CANBERRA, Feb 12 AAP - NSW and Victorian nursing home owners have the worst recordfor failing to turn approved beds into actual places within a two-year deadline.

These places are known as phantom beds because the nursing home owner has not turnedits federal government licence into a real bed in the stipulated two-year period.

Ageing Minister Kevin Andrews, who took over the portfolio from Bronwyn Bishop afterthe last election, has made the issue a major priority.

Mr Andrews has warned that aged care operators risk losing their bed allocation ifthey cannot give a reasonable explanation for the delay in creating an actual place.

"The minister wants information on each and every outstanding bed over two years,"

said a spokeswoman for Mr Andrews.

"He wants to know where those beds are, in what regions, who has the beds and whattheir reasons are for not delivering.

"Those providers who don't give satisfactory reasons for having these beds outstanding,he will consider ... calling in those beds and reallocating them to the same regions,but to providers who can deliver."

Department of Ageing figures show that there are 2,816 phantom beds out of a totalof 13,300 that have been allocated but are not in service.

A state breakdown shows that 1,123 of the 2,816 beds are from NSW and 870 are from Victoria.

However, the spokeswoman noted that the two most populous states also had the highestnumbers of online beds.

Of the other states, 448 phantom beds are from Queensland, 190 from Western Australia,101 from South Australia, 52 from Tasmania, 32 from the Northern Territory and the ACThas none.

Apart from trying to resolve the phantom bed situation, the spokeswoman said the governmentalso wanted to ensure that licences granted in the past two years came online.

AAP so/daw/apm

KEYWORD: AGED