"It's disgusting": Nursing home slammed for leaving double amputee on roof for hours
Lea Hammond has told ABC's 7:30 the heartbreaking story of her father's death and how he was left for hours on a roof in a heatwave in scorching Perth sun.
She received a phone call from her father's nursing home, Regis Nedlands, saying that an ambulance was taking her father to the hospital.
“[The staff member said] dad had been taken to hospital due to sunburn. They told me they couldn’t find him, they didn’t know where he was,” Lea said.
Lea arrived at the hospital, horrified to see her father Brian Hunter delirious and suffering serious blisters and burns.
“He was slumped over in the bed, and his back was exposed. I could see his back was really terribly burnt, his whole back was burned. And he was not speaking to us. He was semi in and out of consciousness,” Lea said, speaking about it for the first time to 7.30.
The family discovered that her 86-year-old double amputee father had been left on Regis Nedland's rooftop for two hours.
Police were involved and checked the CCTV footage, showing that a Regis staff member entered the access code for Brian to go onto the roof and let him propel himself onto the rooftop.
Staff at the nursing home are supposed to do hourly checks on residents, but no one noticed Brian was missing.
He was rescued after another resident's visitor saw him outside on the roof unconscious.
Lea says the incident is "disgusting".
“It’s disgusting that anyone would open a door on a 40-degree day and let a man outside with no water,” Lea said.
“No-one knows where he is for two hours. I mean, if that carer put him outside, shouldn’t she have reported that he’d gone outside? Why didn’t they know where he was for two hours?”
The nursing home did a report on the incident and found that Brian entered the access code to open the door to get onto the roof, not a carer.
Lea is furious about this version of events and disputes it.
“I felt quite angry about it that they would say something like that,” she said.
“I’ve visited so many times at Regis, and he really found it quite difficult to remember the key code number.
“Every time I went there, I would have to put the code in for him.”
The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission has already sanctioned Regis Nedlands for putting residents at "serious risk" after finding 30 allegations of rough handling or unwanted sexual contact.
The Commission said it would continue to “closely monitor” Regis Nedlands, and if there were ongoing concerns about care and services it “may consider further regulatory action, including whether to vary or revoke the service’s accreditation”, according to an exclusive from the ABC's 7:30.
It wasn't the first incident Brian suffered at Regis, as he had a fall in November that left him with a black eye and a bleed on his brain.
After recovering from the burns, Brian lied in his bed for four weeks before passing away, with Lea saying no one from the nursing home called.
“At the end of his life, Dad barely spoke. He wasn’t speaking at all. They had to feed-tube him because he couldn’t swallow. And he barely recognised us,” she said.
“He was just a great father, wonderful grandfather, fantastic husband. This is just so distressing to see him being treated in that manner.
“I think he was just totally neglected, it’s awful.”
Photo credits: ABC