AMount Gambier aged care provider has moved to reassure the community that it is doing its best in trying conditions, following sanctions being imposed on the facility.

Boandik Lodge has had a Federal Government Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission (ACQSC) sanction applied exclusively to Boandik Kessal on Lake Terrace in relation to a COVID-19 outbreak at the facility.

The facility will not be eligible to receive Commonwealth subsidies for any new care recipients until the compliance issues are addressed and must also provide additional training for its officers, employees and agents.

Boandik’s chief executive officer Gillian McGinty said the facility had done its best during the outbreak and it was disappointing the commission had imposed sanctions.

“We need to improve on infection control processes and try and recruit some more staff in a very difficult environment to get back to ensuring that we met all the standards required by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission,” she said.

“It was difficult for everyone involved and we had a huge impact leading to insufficient skilled staff due to them having contracted COVID-19.

“Boandik has been impacted by the shortage of registered and enrolled nurses throughout Australia and the world, so we are trying to overcome that and recruit staff.”

Mrs McGinty said the COVID-19 outbreak provided a steep learning curve and Boandik would now have handled the situation differently given what they had learned.

“We are improving our processes every day and still doing that,” she said.

“Throughout this process we are working with the Quality Commission, the Department of Health and the advisors to make sure that we do improve on what we’re doing and meet all the standards required.

“We will do this predominantly through changing our procedures through training of staff and recruitment of new staff.

“We handled the outbreak according to our infectious outbreak processes, which we had in place based on previous infections that we have had, but we have never had an infection to the scale of this before.”