Though it has up to 80 people on its waitlist, a newly refurbished aged care facility in central Queensland has more than 20 empty beds due to staff shortages.
After two decades of planning, stage one of a $47 million redevelopment has just been completed at Benevolent Living in Rockhampton.
But the entire top floor of the redevelopment, including 22 new beds, is sitting idle because the not-for-profit organisation cannot find aged care workers to accommodate extra residents.
"Through financial prudent management, we were able to deliver this beautiful new residential aged care building, only to find that we can't fill the buildings because we don't have the staff," chief executive Alison Moss said.
Ms Moss said the industry had had chronic staffing issues for years which was then exacerbated by the pandemic.
"It's quite ironic to build this perfect new building, to be running empty beds, delaying admissions," she said.
"It's just trying to get all the different stakeholders to be working together … because from what I can see, the healthcare system and aged care are just imploding and we need solutions now."
Calls for better pay
Aged & Community Care Providers Association chief executive Paul Sadler said Ms Moss's situation was prevalent around the country.
"It's common for providers to be experiencing a 10 per cent, sometimes more, vacancy rate in their rosters, partly because people are sick, either with COVID or other things, but also because of severe staff shortages," he said.
According to a recent report from the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, the industry needs an extra 35,000 aged care workers across the nation per year to fill growing skills shortages.
Mr Sadler said the report also found the industry had lost 65,000 staff in the past year.
"We also know that if we do have a 10 per cent vacancy rate, that translates to around 27,000 staff in residential aged care being short, and another 15,000 in home care services."
He said although work was underway to improve the situation, including a Fair Work submission to increase aged care pay, more could be done, including better training opportunities and career pathways in the sector.
"Aged care staff are getting less pay than their colleagues in disability or health, and we're often uncompetitive with retail, tourism and other areas as well, so we do need to see an improvement in aged care wages."
In a statement, the Department of Health and Aged Care said in addition to the Fair Work submission, the federal government was working to address the issue by holding its recent roundtable with the aged care workforce.
"Addressing low pay is critical to recruiting the workforce needed to provide safe, quality care," a spokesperson said.
Ms Moss said being funded sufficiently to increase pay levels was vital, and the money used for refurbishments had the stipulations it could only be used for capital works.
"We need to fund aged care at a level that we can pay parity with Queensland Health pay rates," she said.
The issue is expected to be discussed further at next month's Jobs and Skills Summit in Canberra.
Aged care worker visas a 'priority'
Mr Sadler also wanted to see a dedicated visa introduced for aged care workers on top of the existing Pacific Australian Labour Mobility Scheme.
"That's welcomed and the [workers] have been coming into services in regional Queensland, but they're relatively small numbers; we're talking dozens rather than the thousands that we need," he said.
"We need a priority for aged care worker visas, and discussions with the federal government have been relatively positive around that, but we now need some action."
Ms Moss agreed a faster immigration processes would be helpful.
"I have nurses overseas now that have applied to come and work for us; we've accepted their application but they are in this holding pattern of going through the processing."
The Department of Health and Aged Care confirmed the government was considering options to provide "streamlined pathways for migration of aged care workers".
It said this was in addition to workforce initiatives already in place to attract new workers, including advising service providers on how to get and retain staff, as well as offering various placements and scholarships for care nurses.
