A top public servant says aged care residents are getting significant access to GPs, despite evidence at a royal commission showing their health needs are not being met.
Federal health department secretary Glenys Beauchamp says there will be some people in residential aged care facilities who do not have the same level of access to primary health care as others in the community.
But she said aged care residents overall were receiving significant access to those services, as evidenced by data including an increase in the number of GPs providing services in residential facilities.
"Access to GPs in a global sense doesn't seem to be an issue," Ms Beauchamp told the aged care royal commission on Thursday.
"That doesn't mean there aren't urgent and hot spots that might emerge at particular points in time or indeed in particular areas."
She disagreed with senior counsel assisting the commission Peter Gray QC's suggestion there were very few GPs regularly visiting facilities.
"I would have thought seeing a GP once a fortnight is a level of service not many other people are experiencing for that particular age group outside of a residential aged care facility," Ms Beauchamp told the Canberra hearing.
Mr Gray said there was a pattern of evidence before the royal commission showing primary health care needs in residential aged care facilities were not being adequately met.
Ms Beauchamp said she could not draw the same conclusion but current work under a new funding model for people in residential aged care would go some way to better understanding the underlying need.
Rhonda McIntosh on Monday told the inquiry her father Allan Sheldon spent four days complaining he was having a heart attack but staff at a Melbourne aged care facility dismissed his chest pains.
It was left to Ms McIntosh to get him to a GP, who then called an ambulance to take the 83-year-old to hospital where he was diagnosed as having a heart attack that was still continuing.
"I found that evidence that I did hear and listen to earlier this week quite concerning and obviously a failure within the health system," Ms Beauchamp told the Canberra hearing.
The royal commission has been told there is a lack of access to GPs as well as specialists, with both aged care residents and older people living in the community experiencing difficulties.
In a written statement, Ms Beauchamp said data analysed by royal commission staff would tend to suggest there may be an issue with access to specialists.
Mr Gray went further, arguing there was very poor access to specialists and saying it needed urgent attention.
Australian Associated Press
