The Australian healthcare company Aspen Medical, whose medical team took over the management of St Basil’s Home for the Aged in Fawkner following a deadly outbreak of COVID-19 last month, has won Federal government contracts worth $1.2 billion since March.

In a report by The Age, one of the contracts, worth $15.6 million, has included the provision of emergency response teams for aged care homes that have had cases of COVID-19. An Aspen Medical team took over at St Basil’s which by Wednesday had recorded 21 deaths linked to COVID-19.

It has been reported that the outbreak at the aged care facility started when a worker infected with COVID-19 came to work at the home. The Victorian Health Department prevented permanent workers from entering the home on 22 July and an Aspen Medical team was called in the following day after three other contract nursing companies had failed to bring the virus under control.

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The company, which was formed in 2003, has provided what it describes as: “a tailored and flexible service wherever it is needed, from a single paramedic to a full spectrum solution”.. This year with the rise of COVID-19, the company dispatched teams on board the Ruby Princess in Sydney and to Newmarch House, Western Sydney where 19 aged care residents died from the virus in April.

Among the company lobbyists are Dr Michael Wooldridge – a former Federal Minister for Health and Family Services (1996-98). Minister for Health and Aged Care 1998-2001 under the John Howard government – and former Labor MP Sam Dastyari.

Dr Wooldridge said the company had worked in aged care homes across the country and in 110 homes in Victoria alone. He said that Aspen had done well everywhere except St Basil’s where conditions had been bad before the company had been called in.

“Aspen has been exceptionally brilliant without exception, except at St Basil’s, so what does that tell you?” he said.

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Conditions at St Basil’s were found to be so difficult that Aspen team members had contracted the COVID-19 virus when they were deployed there.

Federal health officials had done the best they could to bring the situation at St Basils’ under control the Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck told a parliamentary committee earlier this week.

“We had to find a new workforce, and we did that, we brought people in within 24 hours’ notice,” he told the committee. The minister added that mistakes had been made in the process.

Spiro Dimitriou, whose father John had been a resident of St Basil’s and who subsequently died in hospital of COVID-19, said that after Aspen Medical took over at the home the communication with the families of the residents had worsened.

“Once they took over, they may as well have worn blindfolds, they were so hopeless,” said Mr Dimitriou.

He added that it was the failure of the St Basil’s management in the first place that had led to the federal government having to take over managing the home.

“They might have done a bad job, but it was all the fault of St Basil’s in the first place,” said Mr Dimitriou.