{"id":869959,"date":"2026-08-27T06:52:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T06:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/869959\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T06:52:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T06:52:11","slug":"nurses-union-nswnma-accuses-opal-healthcare-of-counting-laundry-and-kitchen-tasks-as-direct-care-for-aged-patients-in-federal-court-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/869959\/","title":{"rendered":"Nurses union NSWNMA accuses Opal Healthcare of counting laundry and kitchen tasks as direct care for aged patients in Federal Court case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The country\u2019s biggest age care provider is accused of breaching new Albanese government requirements by counting folding towels and scraping food off plates as patient care in a test case that could serve as a warning for other providers.<\/p>\n<p>The NSW Nurses and Midwives\u2019 Association launched Federal Court action against Opal Healthcare on Wednesday, alleging the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.afr.com\/street-talk\/private-equity-closes-in-on-a-50pc-stake-at-2b-plus-opal-healthcare-20241104-p5knpd\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">private equity-backed provider<\/a> misclassified laundry and kitchen tasks to reach its mandatory 215 minutes of direct care per patient per day across more than 50 centres in the state.<\/p>\n<p>Loading&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The country\u2019s biggest age care provider is accused of breaching new Albanese government requirements by counting folding towels&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":869960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,137,500],"class_list":["post-869959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=869959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/869960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}