Former Medicare Local head joins aged care body
The former CEO of the Australian Medicare Local Alliance (AMLA), Sean Rooney, has been appointed the inaugural CEO of the newly unified Leading Age Services Australia (LASA) organisation.
Mr Rooney will take over from Patrick Reid, who has headed LASA for the last three years. Formerly known as Aged Care Association Australia (ACAA), LASA represents many of the larger, for-profit aged care providers and is set to change its constitution to become a national organisation rather than a federation of state and national bodies.
LASA's counterpart in the mission-based/not-for-profit sector, Aged and Community Services Australia (ACSA), is also close to achieving national unification after many years of trying and it will also shortly lose its head. CEO John Kelly has announced he'll be stepping down in the coming months as the organisation's state branches complete a move away from a federated structure.
ACSA Victoria and Queensland have been represented by the national body since 2012 and last month, ACS SA & NT and ACS WA voted to wind up their boards and transition to membership of a single organisation. The NSW/ACT and Tasmanian branches will vote this month.
The aged care industry has long discussed having one single representative body but both organisations tend to lobby together on a national level.