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New service for managing elderly patients at home

The second recommendation of Neglect, the Interim Report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety emphasised the importance of reducing sedative medication in the elderly. It is a difficult area for GPs and staff attending patients in Aged Care facilities and the final report will suggest more concrete solutions to the problem.

Managing these patients at home can be an equally difficult issue for GPs. However, local clinicians are now able to get advice via a new service provided by Dr Jedda Schutz.

Dr Schutz consults at the Northern Rivers Psychiatry rooms in Bangalow approximately once per month and now offers one-off psychiatric assessments for patients over 65 year of age.

Details: Published: 22 January 2020

Enviro-Docs welcome Lancet report

Describing the recent MJA-Lancet report on health and climate change as a “wakeup call [for]… all levels of Australian government” the group Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA) has warned of major challenges to the healthcare system, including children being particularly susceptible to extreme weather and higher temperatures increasing the likelihood of illness and death in people over 65 years of age.

Calling heat “a serious health threat in Australia,” the DEA spokesperson Dr Arnagretta Hunter said the 2019 report of the MJA–Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: a turbulent year with mixed progress is “an extraordinary collaboration of 35 global institutions… The health community will not be silent on the greatest threat humanity has ever faced.

Details: Published: 22 January 2020

Mike Fitzgerald with someone’s best friend.

Could dogs be science’s new best friend?

Ageing in dogs bears many similarities to ageing in humans. They start to lose hearing, vision, mobility, can get cancer, arthritis, heart disease, renal failure and brain ageing (doggy dementia). The differences in the way dogs age may be illuminating for our human species as well.

For example: why do smaller breeds of dogs tend to have longer lifespans (up to 16 years or more) compared to larger and giant breed dogs who may only live 8 to 10 years?

The Dog Ageing Project is a longitudinal observational study being conducted by University of Washington and Texas A&M, funded jointly by a grant from the US National Institute on Ageing as part of the National Institutes of Health and private donations.

Details: Written by: Mike Fitzgerald, Veterinarian.; Published: 22 January 2020

Aged care = ‘shocking neglect’

The Australian aged care system fails to meet the needs of its older, vulnerable, citizens, does not deliver uniformly safe and quality care, is unkind and uncaring towards older people and, in too many instances, it neglects them.

So reads the Interim Report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety a detailed document with the stark title of “Neglect”. It was released on 25 November 2019, almost a year before the final report is due.

Details: Written by: Robin Osborne; Published: 24 December 2019

Happy health reporting season… or is it?

In advance of festive season we have reporting season, at least for government agencies, with two reports on health system performance being issued in late November, one by the NSW Auditor-General, the other by the Health Care Complaints Commission.

For the figure-fond the Health 2019 Audit Office report states that the budgeted expense for the 15 local health districts, one being the Northern NSW LHD, and two speciality networks, increased from $18.3 billion to $19.4 billion in 2018–19. However, “The 15 health entities recorded unfavourable variances between actual and budgeted expenses.”