Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Lyndoch Living is selling both its $22 million Lyndoch Primary Care Centre – which opened less than six months ago – and the May Noonan Hostel in Terang which it bought in 2018, as it tries to stay afloat.

Indeed Lyndoch hopes to sell both assets by the end of the financial year with potential buyers now emerging.

In addition, the $100 million, grand-slam masterplan is also on hold and may never be revived.

As we know, Lyndoch is bleeding money.

It’s haemorrhaging from a fatal combination of low resident numbers (around 72 per cent occupancy), the $22 million primary care centre being virtually empty, and May Noonan Hostel only 50 per cent full, with an ongoing battle to find staff so more beds can be opened.

While Lyndoch is not insolvent – thanks to a buffer of residential bonds which don’t have to be refunded all at the same time – it can’t keep going the way it is.

What is it doing to turn the ship around?

I’ve spent the past few weeks trying to answer that question.

I’ve pieced together bits and pieces from sources inside and outside of Lyndoch, including a sit-down, face-to-face conversation with the Acting CEO Jill Davidson who reiterated earlier public statements that, under her watch, Lyndoch will focus first and foremost on its core business.

That core business – wait for it – is looking after the elderly.

Thankyou, Jill. At last, someone is in charge who has their eye on the main game and not the puffed up trimmings and trappings of being a CEO or, god help us, CEO OF THE YEAR.

The bloated administration at Lyndoch Living is also under review, as are all the partnerships and sponsorships put in place which struggled to explain their relevance or benefit to the elderly residents who just want quality, daily care and a good hot cup of tea.

All that we feared and warned about has come to pass.

All of the red flags are at full hoist.

Some of those who raised these flags deserve a special mention tonight, including the Keep Lyndoch Living Group led by retired naval intelligence officer Jim Burke and medical expert Professor James Dunbar.

In 2021, the pair launched a petition which attracted more than 1000 signatures asking to stop the primary care centre from being built until there was an independent review into its viability.

The Lyndoch board shrugged it off and the-then chief operating officer Elizabeth Green (who has since resigned) was shuffled out to assure us the plan was fail proof.

Well, that’s what the highly paid consultants from Melbourne said.

They were wrong. And where are these consultants now?

Which brings me to the real hero of the piece – Allan Conway, who was acting Chief Financial Officer before the first sod was turned.

Allan did all he could to warn the-then CEO Doreen Power and the board led by Sue Cassidy that the plan could sink Lyndoch.

His concerns were dismissed because, once again, the highly paid consultants from Melbourne said all would be well.

So millions of dollars were borrowed and the health care centre was built and now it has just one tenant: the 10-GP medical clinic owned by Lyndoch.

And after overseeing all of this – all of it – the former CEO/on leave CEO is still on the payroll as lawyers negotiate her settlement because in 2020 the blind board was stupid enough to sign up for another five years of that kind of “leadership and vision”.

From all of this blindness and stupidity, the community is left with the flickering flames of a fire sale and our once-proud aged care home rebuilding itself from the ground up.

It’s a chapter we must learn from and never forget and my job these next few months is to unpick exactly how we got here.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

It’s 200 days since the plug was pulled on Lyndoch Living CEO Doreen Power and we still don’t know if Ms Power remains on the payroll, remains “on leave”, or why she disappeared so rapidly in the first place.

Ms Power’s position within Lyndoch is one of many, many unanswered questions that still hang over our community owned aged care home and which we will continue to pursue – one by one – until we have all the answers.

We will continue to pursue these answers because we have a right to know, particularly when – under the direction of Ms Power and a complicit board – Lyndoch has suffered its greatest crisis since it was started by the community more than 60 years ago.

This crisis has touched every corner of Lyndoch, from the care of elderly and vulnerable residents and retirees, to the care and wellbeing of the staff, to its financial viability, and its reputation.

So many people have been left traumatised.

It’s a long, slow road back and we all want to see Lyndoch survive and succeed, but that doesn’t include giving a free pass to those who sat at the top and steered Lyndoch into the iceberg.

The focus now is on accountability and demanding full and truthful information.

So let’s start at the top.

Ms Power, for all intents and purposes, is a public servant.

I am reliably informed that her total salary package (salary, car, super) is around the $310,000 a year mark, so she is one of the most highly paid public servants in Warrnambool.

If Ms Power has been “on leave” for 200 days, she is still drawing on this salary package…for doing what, exactly?

As this is public money – the equivalent of around $1000 a day – we have a right to know.

It’s not good enough for Lyndoch to keep rolling out the line that Ms Power is on leave and we must respect her privacy.

The latter is not a problem, but we want to know what Ms Power is doing for her salary, is she suing Lyndoch, is she fighting to come back? Or is she actually in the Bahamas on an extended holiday? I doubt it.

I’m hoping to shed some further light on the CEO’s status later this week.

This is the beginning of my second, deep and slow dive into Lyndoch where I will follow all the breadcrumbs back, because it’s astonishing that despite all that has happened, all that has been uncovered and reported and confirmed, not one person has been held to account, accepted responsibility, or apologised to the people of Lyndoch and the wider community.

Not one.

This seems to be a worrying trend.

A Royal Commission in Brisbane into abuse within a disability service commented last week that:  “The board … has issued no public statement or statement to staff regretting the failures of the past and acknowledging responsibility. The board remains largely unchanged.”

“What seems to me to be striking … is nobody seems to have been held accountable,” Commissioner Ronald Sackville said, in a report on the ABC.

Sound familiar?

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Here’s some of what I know about the $22 million Lyndoch Living medical clinic which is shrouded in uncertainty about its future and the future of the entire building, which opened just four months ago.

First, the medical clinic now has just 10 GPs, including part-time GPs, which is half the number (20) Lyndoch planned for and needs to make the place viable.

These GPs pay Lyndoch an annual fee to be in the building and without them, Lyndoch’s business plan (which we have never seen), falls completely apart.

The GPs can leave at any time – they are free to go wherever they like – giving 12 weeks’ notice. Many have left, and the former Warrnambool Medical Clinic practice which Lyndoch bought in 2019 for a whopping $1.3m and rolled into its “core business” is now a smouldering husk.

Second, the well-regarded General Manager of the clinic, Sue Fleming, has resigned. I understand she left some weeks ago, but Ms Fleming’s resignation has not been announced by Lyndoch and so far there is no replacement. The ship has no captain.

Third, the awful, ugly building (the result of three or four re-designs) is only half full and only half finished.

The top floor is unfinished and empty, as are two prime spaces at the front of the building with no internal walls and wires dangling from the ceiling.

Fourth, until five days ago, Lyndoch Healthcare Pty Ltd (which oversees it all) had four directors.

The directors were Lyndoch Living chair Sue Cassidy, board member Andrew Paton, Lyndoch former CEO/MIA/on-leave/back-in-Sunbury Doreen Power and Ms Fleming.

As of 2 Feb, it has just two directors: Ms Cassidy and Mr Paton.

In what I’m sure is a completely unrelated move, both Ms Cassidy and Mr Paton have recently made career changes, with Ms Cassidy closing down her hairdressing salon, and Mr Paton leaving his managerial position at the Warrnambool City Council.

When I last asked if the directors of the Lyndoch medical clinic would be paid, the question was considered “hypothetical”. Having learnt this information tonight, I will be asking the question again tomorrow.

In the meantime, the clinic is losing money. Worse, the entire building is now officially an expensive millstone around Lyndoch’s neck, with some saying it will pull the whole place under unless – at the very least – the building is sold.

Lyndoch borrowed big to build the joint: now it’s on borrowed time to make it work.

We’ll keep watching.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

THOUGHTS: How do you feel when you read headlines like this about Lyndoch Living, which acknowledge what we tried to warn about so many years ago?

At last serious action is being taken. Finally Lyndoch is considering selling that catastrophic failure: the half empty, over-sized, ego-driven monstrosity of a medical clinic.

And finally the slopping pig’s trough of highly paid management positions, consultancies, partnerships and sponsorships created by the former CEO and embraced by the board is being emptied.

I must admit that as I read this front page story, I swung between relief and rage, between vindication and sadness, because nobody took this seriously before it was almost too late.

We were dismissed by the Lyndoch hierarchy and board as a bunch of “social media” stirrers. For years, a couple of blockheads at The Standard dismissed the investigative reporting behind this story as the work of “just a blogger”, which meant they could continue to slap each other on the back while at the same time being completely played by the Lyndoch PR machine.

The Keep Lyndoch Living group, including Jim Burke who has written a terrific piece tonight (LINK AT THE END), was written off by the Lyndoch board as not being worthy of attention.

And thousands of people who signed not one, but two petitions to try and save Lyndoch, were also written off.

But we hung in there. We never gave up and we won’t, until this is set right. I am so proud to be among the terriers, so proud of Keep Lyndoch Living, so proud of every single person who has stood up for Lyndoch publicly and bravely: we have never lost sight of caring for our elderly and the staff who care for them.

Please skip across to read Jim Burke’s piece on KLL, it’s a beauty. Here is the link.

Carol Altmann – The Terrier

Dear wonderful Terrier readers, I have news: I am running as an independent candidate for South-West Coast at the next State election.

I barely slept a wink last night, knowing I would be telling you this exciting news tonight, because it’s so exciting. [You can zip across right now to the new website to donate or volunteer or both! www.vote1carol.com.au]

It’s time for a new voice for our wonderful south-west community, from Warrnambool to Terang, Panmure to Portland, Heywood to Hotspur, Narrawong to Noorat.

Come election day on November 26, I want to be a terrier for every town.

My promise to you is that I will be a strong, independent voice who is not bogged down in party politics where great ideas and real progress is so often lost in power games.

My priority is and always has been YOU, and together we can do incredible things. We already have, just look at our track record:

We fought hard for Lyndoch Living aged care for four years and stood up publicly for the residents, families and staff from day one.

We cleaned up credit card abuse in the Warrnambool City Council.

We stood up for the environment, our wild beaches, and our precious indigenous cultural heritage, all of which are critical to a sustainable and enriching future.

And we voted out an entire council that no longer had the trust of the community.

This is what people power and the nimble, grassroots movement of The Terrier has achieved these past four years and I want to spend the next four making sure the wider South-West Coast is heard, that we take action on what matters, and that we build a bright and exciting future.

We have 100 days until the election: a day where we can create a little bit of history and change how the South-west Coast is represented.

We can do it.

Please visit the www.vote1carol.com.au website to make a donation, large or small, which will help cover the costs of Vote1Carol, from t-shirts to fence signs.

You can also sign up at www.vote1carol.com.au to help in whatever way feels comfortable, from putting up a sign, to handing out a flyer, to holding a fun fundraiser.

I can’t wait to get out there, to meet with you, talk with you and take your voice right to the heart of Parliament.

On we go!