From 1 July this week, every Government-funded aged care home in Australia now has a Service Compliance Rating in the ‘Find a provider’ section of the Government’s aged care portal My Aged Care.
What does this mean?
When you search for an aged care home, the rating will appear under its name.
They are designed to indicate whether a home has met its requirements for quality and safety with four categories:
- Inadequate
- Significant improvements needed
- Some improvements needed
- Meets requirements
If you click through on the compliance rating, you see how a home has performed over the last three years – including whether it has received any notices of non-compliance or sanctions in the past.
The Service Compliance Rating provides an easy way to check the current status and how the home has performed over the last three years.
The My Aged Care website previously recorded past histories of non-compliance but these were not presented in a rating format, while the individual assessment reports for homes were on the website of the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, the independent body that monitors homes.
The new system is a small but important step towards providing older people and their families with greater transparency when choosing an aged care home.
The lack of available information for residents and families on the quality of safety has been a recurring theme throughout the Royal Commission into Aged Care.
In their Interim Report – titled ‘Neglect’ – published last October, the Commissioners concluded:
“Older people and their loved ones do not know what to look for when choosing a home… there is no easily accessible public information about the quality of services or reliable information about whether the services deliver on their advertised promises.”
However, it’s important to remember that these ratings are only focused on whether aged care homes are meeting their regulatory requirements – not the experience of its residents like a traditional ‘star rating’ like you would see on TripAdvisor or other rating websites.
At agedcare101, we still recommend the best way to judge a home is to visit and see the quality of care being provided. We also have a handy list of questions to take with you here.
