An AHA Director, Richard Stock, was appointed as the Administrator for the Kirralee Residential Aged Care Facility in 2008. Kirralee is a 100 bed high care facility in Ballarat, operated by the Aged Care Services Australia Group (ACSAG).

The Aged Care Standards and Accreditation Agency had found Kirralee to be non-compliant regarding 33 of 44 Expected Outcomes and reported that residents were at serious risk in relation to five Expected Outcomes. As a consequence, the Department of Health and Ageing applied a range of sanctions and required that a Nurse Advisor and an Administrator be appointed.

Our immediate priorities were to ensure that matters identified in the Agency’s Serious Risk reports were addressed and that Kirralee was able to continue to operate and meet the needs of residents. We worked closely with the facility, the parent organisation and the Nurse Advisor in this role. The parent organisation ACSAG, was strongly committed to addressing the identified deficiencies.

After these initial priorities were addressed, our focus moved to working with management to ensure an organisation, management, financial and systems focus to the issues confronting Kirralee and to provide guidance in addressing these issues. The objective was to ensure sustainable and continuous improvement.

A subsequent Review Audit by the Agency concluded that Kirralee was now fully compliant regarding all 44 Expected Outcomes and, as a consequence, the Department removed the sanctions that had been applied.