clinical focus talking to older people in a similar way to what we did with the quality of life work . We were again able to distil down to six key dimensions of quality of care experience which obviously feed into quality of life , but they ’ re not quite the same .
The six are : being treated with dignity and respect by the aged care staff either at home or in residential care , being able to participate in decision-making about the care and services that are received , that aged care staff have the skills and training needed to provide good quality care , that people receive the services that support their health and wellbeing to provide the quality of life that they want , and good social relationships and connections to the community .
What can providers expect from these tools , and how can they help improve organisations and their delivery of care ? We have several aged care providers in a number of Australian states we ’ ve worked very closely with for the last three or four years , and they ’ re already using them in a variety of contexts .
We ’ re getting really good feedback . For example , a number of our aged care provider partner organisations are using the QOL-ACC tool from the first moment with a new client where they ’ re asking them about their quality of life , and they ’ re using the QOL-ACC as a conversation mechanism for asking those questions .
And they ’ re regularly coming back to the person at three or six monthly time intervals and tracking their quality of life and seeing how they ’ re doing , and maybe adjusting the care and services they receive to enhance their quality of life as much as possible .
Similarly , we know the QCE-ACC is being used as an audit tool by a number of our service providers in regular annual audit processes to see how they ’ re faring similarly with quality of life .
We ’ ve collected a lot of data now , so one area of work that we ’ re now focusing on is the possibility to develop benchmarks so we can survey lots of older people receiving care and services at home and residential care service settings and see what the average quality of life and the average cost of care experience looks like . We can give the service providers an indication of where they would sit in terms of those average indicators .
These new tools give us an outcome measure which we can then use to investigate the cost effectiveness of new service innovations and new models of care . So rather than focusing on traditional clinical indicators of care quality , what we ’ re really focusing on is – if we introduce a new service innovation or a new model of care in our organisation – what impact does that have ?
It ’ s probably going to cost the organisation something in terms of additional staff , resources , equipment , but there ’ s going to be a benefit in terms of improvements in quality of life and quality of care experience for our clients . ■
An online assessment tool helping residential aged care homes assess the dementia knowledge , skills and attitudes among staff .
Dementia Practice Health Check :
• Assists your organisation in meeting the Aged Care Quality Standards and consumer expectations .
• Identifies knowledge gaps and prioritises areas for staff development .
• Helps to demonstrate internal improvement and measure performance against other organisations .
To find out more and complete your first free assessment visit : dementialearning . org . au / practice-health-check
agedcareinsite . com . au 21