If you’ve ever wished it was easier to find out, warts and all, what a particular aged care home is ‘really’ like – say, by being a fly on the wall or talking to residents and their families and asking them all the direct questions you have – then you’ll be pleased with this news.
The Australian Aged Care Quality Agency (Quality Agency) has confirmed that it will be including comments and feedback from residents and other clients of aged care services in its publicly available audit reports from 2017.
Speaking as part of a panel on quality in aged care at the annual Play Up conference in Sydney last week, the Quality Agency’s CEO, Nick Ryan, told delegates that his organisation would begin including direct comments and feedback from aged care residents and other consumers of aged care services, as part of it’s routine audit reporting process in 2017.
Mr Ryan said the Quality Agency – the statutory agency of the government whose role it is to promote and ensure quality in aged care services, including managing and implementing the accreditation system – interviewed more than 54,000 residents and other consumers of care services each year as part of its quality assessment and accreditation process.
Currently however, that feedback from consumers and their representatives is not available to the public, something he said the Agency wanted to change.
Changes ahead
Mr Ryan’s announcement reflects some of the changes and new directions discussed in Let’s Talk about Quality – Shaping the Future, the Quality Agency’s December 2015 report from a national public consultation about the concept of quality in aged care.
Its focus is on shifting the concept and measurement of ‘quality aged care’, beyond just meeting a set of minimum standards as part of the accreditation process.
A big theme from the consultation included, for example, more transparency from aged care service providers around the way they actually measure and monitor quality care and services – and how they respond to consumers.
An official ratings system
Another strong theme in the report is the idea of the Quality Agency incorporating a ratings system into accreditation audits, which could include a mix of direct observations from qualified external observers, such as Agency reviewers, but also feedback from the people who actually live there or use the services, the staff who work there and others, like the doctors and other healthcare professionals who visit.
As a submission from one care provider said, quoted in the report, using this sort of approach to rate services would provide “a strong incentive for services to provide the highest quality possible. At the same time, it will give consumers more meaningful information on which to base their choices between services.”
If you think about it, this kind of approach could include a wide range of commentators. Food suppliers, IT consultants, training organisations, maintenance people… A comprehensive picture of organisations could be painted which reflected not just the personal experience of the individual resident or service user, but helpful insights into the day-to-day attitudes, values and processes of the whole organisation.
Getting around subjectivity
A number of websites offering ratings systems for aged care have been launched in recent years. These can be useful, particularly as a sounding board against our own observations and research about an aged care service. But, like the ratings systems for hotels and restaurants and tourist destinations, they’re often highly subjective and open to manipulation.
Including more (and more transparent) information about aged care services – particularly a wide range of personal experiences and opinion – in the government’s publicly available reporting, could only be welcome news.
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Keryn Curtis chaired the panel last week at the Arts Health Institute’s annual Play Up Convention about Quality in aged care. On the panel were five guests including:
- Maggie Beer – Australian cook, food author, restaurateur, food producer and 2010 Senior Australian of the Year
- Professor Henry Brodaty – leading international dementia researcher and head of the Dementia Collaborative Research Centres
- Nick Ryan – CEO of the Australian Aged Care Quality Agency
- Robina Beard – 78 year old dancer and actress, famous for role as ‘Madge’ in the long-running Palmolive advertisements in the 70s
- Jean-Paul Bell – comic theatre and stand-up performer, mime artist and world-renowned ‘Humour-manitarians’; Creative director of the Arts Health Institute; state finalist in the 2016 Senior Australian of the Year.
