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.
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.
Multiple-level data
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 Aged Care Royal Commission, which delivered its final report in 2021, found that 86 per cent of Australians living in residential aged care settings were malnourished. Up to 26 per cent of all complaints about residential care made to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission in the year to March 31, 2024, were about food.
The top three types of complaints related to food in residential care were about the quality and variety of food, nutrition and hydration, and specific diet.
In the 2023-24 Federal Budget the Australian Government invested $12.9 million to improve nutrition in aged care in response to one of the commission's 128 recommendations, calling for measures to help ensure consumers' basic needs were being met.
Conditions included that providers report back on what they are spending to meet residents' basic needs, especially their nutritional needs, including their spending on raw food, pre-processed food, bought-in food, and kitchen staff.
Information about the finances and operations of residential aged care and home care providers across the board has been published on My Aged Care since February, 2024, and the aged care watchdog has made food, nutrition and dining a focus, with unannounced visits, education and support.
Mentoring for outcomes
In another stab at reform, the Commission launched a Food, Nutrition and Dining Hotline in July 2023, and the Federal Department of Health and Ageing funded the Maggie Beer Foundation to deliver education and training to residential aged care service providers to improve consumers' dining, food, and nutritional outcomes.
The Central Coast's BaptistCare Orana is among the 120 homes nationwide selected to participate in the 12-month program, which started in June.
A resident of another BaptistCare nursing home, 85-year-old Gary Turbit, who recently moved into BaptistCare Centre at Warabrook, said there was a lot of room for improvement.
"Most of it goes into the rubbish," Mr Turbit said.
"I can still cook and I can cook good. I was living at Wangi and I was having rump steak, even scotch fillet, and salad and chips."
Bring on the bacon
Mr Turbit said he was accustomed to having bacon, sausages and eggs for breakfast which he would prepare for himself, and he would like to have bacon every day.
"You can't get bacon, only on Sundays, and I've got them to give me two fried eggs of a morning, but they are hard, otherwise they just give you cereal and powdered scrambled eggs.
"A lot of them here don't know what they're eating.
"The other night we had a rissole, about as big as a golf ball and about 80 per cent bread crumbs, and a scoop of Deb mash potatoes. I asked for two, but it wouldn't have mattered if I did get it.
"I've done some cooking in my time, used to cook for the wife and kids, and I know you need to put in some breadcrumbs into rissoles to help them bind, but this was about 80 per cent."
He was regularly served powdered scrambled eggs, and powdered mashed potato, Mr Turbit said.
A spokesperson for BaptistCare said the home does not use powdered eggs or mashed potato.
Dietician reviewed
Mr Turbit might be one of the lucky ones, given that his nursing home spends about $13.60 per day per resident on food, and has a kitchen and chef on site preparing meals seven days per week.
A BaptistCare spokesperson said the Warabrook centre said menus were reviewed by dieticians for taste and nutrition and comply with all current standards.
Residents and family members are invited to attend meetings with the chef manager and other staff about the food provided.
"We answer concerns by residents as they present and via food forums that BaptistCare Warabrook residents attend," the spokesperson said.
"In addition to this, senior leaders eat with residents weekly, sharing the meal and asking residents their thoughts. The chef and kitchen team can personalise menu choices where needed."
