It took an early morning fall and a trip to hospital to prove a care worker was not showing up to care appointments with a 76-year-old Dunedin woman.
Now, the woman’s family are terrified Healthcare NZ is going to assign the worker in question to provide care for her again.
Both the woman and her daughter, whom the Otago Daily Times has agreed not to name, said they did not want the support worker to be assigned to provide care for her again.
The woman’s care plan includes four daily visits from a support worker, but the carer in question had a history of not showing up for appointments, the woman’s daughter said.
She laid complaints with Healthcare NZ, but it told her the carer in question had logged the visits in the company’s app, which included a GPS "geolocation" feature that showed she had been nearby at the correct times.
The carer’s deceit was proven last year after the woman suffered a fall in her home early on September 18.
An ambulance was called and she was admitted to the emergency department of Dunedin Hospital at 6.08am.
Later that morning, the support worker recorded a visit in the app which showed a start time of 8.57am and a finish of 9.33am, without raising the alarm that her client was not at home.
The daughter said she had since received an apology from Healthcare NZ for the fraudulently logged visit.
"But they wanted the same caregiver to come back to Mum and they would monitor her to make sure she’s turning up."
She was surprised the support worker was still employed.
Healthcare NZ was unable to confirm the support worker in question would no longer be assigned to the woman’s care.
Group chief executive Josephine Gagan said ongoing care requirements were being discussed with the family.
She also declined to discuss what disciplinary actions, if any, the worker faced, or whether she was still with the company.
"However, as a generalisation we take these matters very seriously, initiate an investigation and seek responses from the staff before taking any disciplinary action."
The company had a zero-tolerance policy for any employee who was found after investigation to have breached the trust placed in them.
It had invested in the mobile phone app to record visit time and locations as it was a more reliable way of doing so than a manual timesheet system.
It relied on "the honesty of our support workers to communicate with us if the client is not at the premises when they arrive".
She confirmed a visit had been logged in the app on the morning of September 18.
