news
Sector reacts to
new watchdog
Leading Age Services Australia chief executive Sean Rooney
said the peak body believes more work needs to be done to
understand what consumers value and how they can best get
accurate information to assist in their decision-making.
SERIOUS INCIDENT RESPONSE SCHEME (SIRS)
New commission will give older Australians
and their loved ones a single point of contact
and speed up investigations, minister says.
By Dallas Bastian
T
he minister for aged care, Ken Wyatt, has announced
new quality benchmarks and checks for aged care homes.
The reforms will centre on the establishment of a new
national independent Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission
that the government hopes will increase transparency through a
publicly available rating against quality standards.
Wyatt said the new commission will give older Australians and
their loved ones a single point of contact when they need help
dealing with claims of sub-standard care.
“The unified new commission will be a responsive, one-stop
shop to prevent failures, highlight quality concerns and have
them quickly rectified,” he said.
“Risks to senior Australians will be investigated promptly and
care failures identified faster.”
Aged and Community Services Australia (ACSA) chief
executive Pat Sparrow said the streamlining of the functions
of the Australian Aged Care Quality Agency and the Aged Care
Complaints Commissioner into a single agency should improve
the regulatory system.
COTA Australia chief executive Ian Yates agreed that
consolidating Australia’s aged care oversight powers into a
single independent commission was a significant step towards
better monitoring and enforcement of quality in Australia’s
aged care system.
RATING SYSTEM FOR PUBLIC REPORTING OF AGED CARE
Yates also welcomed news that the new commission will
develop a transparent ratings system, showing how individual
nursing homes perform against Aged Care Quality Standards.
“Providers will start being measured against new and much more
consumer focused standards on 1 July 2019 and the results will be
able to be compared on the My Aged Care website,” he said.
Sparrow said ACSA and its members are keen to work with the
government to ensure that the performance rating system and
comparison tool add value to the quality system.
“These tools must be fair and accurate for providers while giving
older people and their families clear and meaningful information
about aged care,” she said.
Rooney said it might be “going too far” to place new and
extended reporting responsibilities on providers without
adequately considering the arrangements already in place.
“Several mechanisms already exist to report issues if they arise,
so the proposed SIRS program needs to be further investigated
to determine what additional value it brings to the system,”
he explained.
ACSA’s Sparrow echoed Rooney’s sentiments, saying aged
care providers already comply with serious incident reporting
requirements and added that there is little evidence that a
new version of the system will improve the quality of care for
residents, which is, she added, the only reason change should
be made.
“Refinements to the existing scheme may achieve that aim
more effectively than introducing an entirely new one”.
HOW WE GOT HERE AND WHERE TO NEXT
The reforms were established in res ponse to recommendations
by Kate Carnell and Professor Ron Paterson in their 2017 ‘Review
of National Aged Care Quality Regulatory Processes’, set up to
investigate failures at South Australian’s Oakden Older Persons
Mental Health Service.
Wyatt said: “We recognise that the vast majority of providers
give consistent quality care to their residents. But, as we have
seen, there can be failures. We must ensure that disasters like
Oakden are never repeated.”
COTA noted that the Carnell/Paterson inquiry also included
a recommendation for the appointment of a consumer
commissioner in the new body, tasked with ensuring older
adults and their families receive full information about
their rights and are supported and protected to exercise
those rights.
“The atrocities at Oakden were only brought to light thanks
to the tenacity and persistence of Oakden family members,
demonstrating the importance of having strong consumer voices
heard in aged care quality processes,” Yates said.
“We need to make it much easier, indeed normal practice, for
consumers and families to be involved – that’s why we need the
Consumer Commissioner’s role.”
UnitingCare Australia national director Claerwen Little said she
hopes news of the commission will go some way to improving
the view of aged care in Australia.
“We have been increasingly concerned about the anxiety that
negative coverage creates for residents and families, as well as the
stress that it creates for our staff,” she said.
“This is the first step in re-establishing confidence in a system
which, by and large, works well.”
A new chief clinical adviser will provide advice to the
commission, particularly on complex clinical matters.
The new commission will start from 1 January 2019 and
will bring together the functions of the Australian Aged Care
Quality Agency, the Aged Care Complaints Commissioner
and the aged care regulatory functions of the Department
of Health. ■
agedcareinsite.com.au
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