Coroner To Look At 5 More Deaths In Nursing Home
The Age
Saturday March 11, 2000
CANBERRA
The Victorian coroner will investigate five more deaths of residents from the Riverside Nursing Home, closed this week by the Federal Government.
In a statement issued yesterday afternoon, coroner Graeme Johnstone said an investigation would be conducted to determine whether the deaths should have been reported to his office.
A report on the safety of the home on 3 March had ``necessitated a preliminary investigation" into an extra five deaths this year, the statement said.
The revelation follows reports on Thursday that the coroner would investigate the death of an 84-year-old woman, Ms Antonietta Cucuzzella, a resident of Riverside who died on 23 January, a few days after receiving a kerosene bath at the home.
The home was closed last Monday and the federal Aged Care Minister, Mrs Bronwyn Bishop, told Parliament that the lives of elderly residents would be at risk if they remained in the home.
Mrs Bishop's spokeswoman said yesterday that neither the minister, the Aged Care Standards and Accreditation Agency that inspected the home, or the federal Department of Health and Aged Care, was aware of any issues pertaining to the five deaths. ``We did not know about them until today," she said.
On Thursday the coroner sought the damning inspection report on the home from Mrs Bishop's office after she told Parliament on Wednesday that matters concerning Riverside had been referred to the Australian Federal Police.
The coroner's office would not reveal who the patients were, their cause of death or when they died.
The coroner wanted to know what happened and why the deaths had not been reported, he said.
It also emerged yesterday that staff and trade creditors are owed up to $470,000 after the closure of Riverside.
The administrator of the home, Mr David Lofthouse, said he would soon take legal action in the Federal Court and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal against the federal Department of Health and Aged Care in an attempt to win back its bed licences, cancelled recently by the Commonwealth.
``I don't think the department is right in what it did," he told The Age.
Mr Lofthouse also revealed that the now closed home had no indemnity, fire or theft insurance and was behind in paying superannuation contributions on behalf of its employees and taxation payments.
Its record-keeping, he said, was ``all over the place". ``It was difficult for us in the first instance to actually find a lot of the information," he said.
About 80 staff from Riverside are owed entitlements worth between $300,000 and $400,000, while more than 20 trade creditors, including cleaners and an agency that provided staff to the home, are owed about $70,000, Mr Lofthouse said.
The assistant secretary of the Victorian branch of the Australian Nursing Federation, Ms Hannah Sellers, said she was concerned other nursing homes may also be without insurance. Ms Sellers again called on Mrs Bishop to guarantee workers' entitlements.
© 2000 The Age
