Aged care royal commission chair has died

Aged care royal commission chair Richard Tracey QC continued his work to fix a “cruel and unkind” system up until his death.

Mr Tracey died aged 71 on Friday in the US, where he was being treated for terminal skin cancer diagnosed only seven weeks earlier.

The former Federal Court judge continued working on the royal commission’s interim report during his treatment.

Fellow royal commissioner Lynelle Briggs said the report, due to be released on October 31, would be one of Mr Tracey’s many legacies.

“It was Richard who labelled aspects of the aged care system cruel and unkind, after two particularly gruelling days of evidence in Darwin,” she said on Monday.

“And it was Richard who encouraged me to drive our policy agenda beyond change at the margin to transformative change, given the degree of substandard care that was apparent to us.”

Ms Briggs said news of Mr Tracey’s death was a complete shock and absolutely shattering.

The new chair of the royal commission Tony Pagone QC, who was appointed as the third commissioner last month, said Mr Tracey’s work on the inquiry had been solid, selfless and significant.

The royal commission held a minute’s silence to honour Mr Tracey after announcing his death on Monday at the beginning of a Melbourne public hearing examining workforce issues.

Senior counsel assisting the commission Peter Rozen QC said people in aged care should be confident about the skills and abilities of those caring for them, and feel secure and safe regardless of where they received that care.

“From the evidence to date, a picture is emerging of an aged care sector struggling to attract, train, retain and sustain its workforce,” he said.

Mr Rozen said the current arrangements for responding to serious misconduct by individual workers, including providing poor-quality care or even callously assaulting those in their care, were far from adequate to protect the elderly.

Professor Kathy Eagar said the re-conceptualisation of residential aged care as a ‘home’ rather than an ‘institution’ since the introduction of the Aged Care Act in 1997 had inadvertently encouraged the development of a workforce that was less clinically skilled.

She said describing residential aged care as a home somehow implied it was a lifestyle choice, rather than people going into care because they were so frail or had other significant care needs that they could no longer be at home.

“The population currently in care needs more clinical skills, not less,” the Australian Health Services Research Institute director said.

Prof Eagar said there were too many calls for ambulances when people could have been cared for within an aged care home if better skills and staffing were available.

“(It includes) reports of people dying in the back of an ambulance because nobody recognised or had the skills to care for people literally in their last hours, days and weeks,” she said.

Australian Associated Press