‘They basically murdered him’: Man’s heartbreak over dad’s aged care death

When John’s dad Alan* moved into an aged care facility, he was happy, healthy and “like a pig in mud”, but during the last year of his father’s life John claims the standard of care began to deteriorate, leaving Alan malnourished, which John believes ultimately led to his death.

The 64-year-old pensioner, from New South Wales, visited his father regularly at the home, which Starts at 60 has not named for legal reasons, and recalled how comfortable he was in his new surroundings after initially being admitted to the low level aged care facility in June 2014.

But after a few years of content came quick and serious deterioration before Alan was transferred to hospital in September, suffering from aspiration pneumonia and having contracted the MRSA super-bug.

“My wife and I saw him on the Tuesday and he was fully alert, arguing the point with us, being his normal self. No problems at all,” John told Starts at 60. “Then I had a call on the Friday and my brother says ‘Dad’s in a coma. Get up here now, he hasn’t got long to live’.

“We found out that it was aspiration pneumonia caused by malnutrition, all the muscles in his throat had begun to deteriorate because he wasn’t getting the correct food. Any fluids, instead of going down the oesophagus, they went down the trachea into his lungs instead of his stomach.

“Then this bug, this MRSA bug, I asked ‘How did he catch it in the nursing home?’ and they said poor hygiene.”

Alan, aged 95, remained in hospital for a month before he passed away and John personally holds the aged care facility responsible for not paying closer attention to his father, who he claims had been losing weight for around a year.

He added: “At first he was alright then he said that the food was going downhill, he had broccoli one day and it was still frozen. One of the heart doctors he was under wanted them to improve the nutrition at the place but that went completely ignored. I think dad tried to raise issues like that but they just ignored him and wouldn’t take any notice.

“In the last year or so, he started to say ‘I seem to be losing a lot of weight, my pants are falling off me’. I said ‘Why? Aren’t you eating correctly? Aren’t you drinking fluids?’

“I went to walk out of the room one day to go down and have a go at them and he said ‘Look don’t, don’t go down there and say anything. They’ll just treat us like rubbish’. He was petrified that it would make things worse for him.”

John said the negative experience of his father’s time in care has made him adamant that he will not be admitted into an aged care facility when he’s older, adding: “I do not want to go near those places, I am staying in my own home.”

John believes the poor standard of care that his father received can be attributed to a multitude of factors including low levels of empathy, as well as problems such as understaffing and the greed of large corporations that are more concerned about profit than people.

“You do [put your trust in them] and they failed miserably. As far as I am concerned they sort of murdered him. That’s the way I look at it,” he said.

“It’s a mixture of a whole lot of things, I put it down to lack of duty of care. They used to come in and take his blood pressure and things, now if they saw him getting skinnier, that should have rang alarm bells. But it never did. It could be a staffing problem, could be a lack of empathy and care from those sorts of people.”

The great-great grandfather sadly passed away on October 19, five weeks after he was initially admitted to hospital. John is also hoping that the royal commission exposes the ugly truth of what goes on in some aged care facilities across the country, adding: “It is just not good enough and I hope that others do not have to suffer in this way.”

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* Names have been changed to protect the family’s anonymity.