St Basils Home for the Aged in Fawkner, Victoria was facing financial insolvency during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, The Age has reported.
According to the latest financial report by St Basils Fawkner, which was lodged almost a year late, the home has not paid rent to the property owner, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia, for years.
For the past decade, the home paid the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese an average annual rent of $2.37 million, but the chairman of St Basil’s Fawkner Bishop Evmenios confirmed to The Age the nursing home’s difficult financial position meant it was still not paying the church to occupy the site.
St Basil Fawkner’s auditor William Buck noted there was “material uncertainty” over the home’s ability to continue as a going concern.
The aged care home also had to slash staff dramatically after 45 residents died from COVID-19 and another five died from alleged neglect during a coronavirus outbreak at the facility in 2020. The outbreak is now the subject of a coronial inquest.
The collapse in revenue from residents dying or departing did allow St Basils Fawkner’s to claim $2.4 million in JobKeeper payments from the federal government.
The report, for the financial year ending June 2021, also revealed the nursing home needed 70 residents at the time to break even, well above the 59 residents the federal Health Department last week confirmed were currently living there.
In response, Bishop Evmenios said the home remained solvent and that since joining as Chairman in September 2020 he had, together with staff at the home, been “rebuilding a once proud and exemplary aged care facility.”
The families of residents who died at the facility told The Age they believe St Basils Fawkner should not have reopened following the deaths.
Source: The Age.
