The number of complaints about aged care services has risen but the number of providers failing to comply with standards has fallen, according to the quality commission’s latest performance report.
In all, there was a total of 2,230 complaints directed against aged care services during the October-December 2022 quarter – 1,261 residential care; 948 home care services; 21 flexible care – the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission’s latest sector performance report shows.
Complaints were made against 819 residential aged services covering 2,708 issues – inadequate staff numbers drew the most complaints (153).
The majority of complaints were made by family members or representatives of residents (692), anonymous (313), other (155) and care recipient (101).
In total, the commission finalised 1,236 complaints about residential care during the quarter.
Reportable incidents
Since 1 April 2021, through the Serious Incident Response Scheme, providers have been required to notify the commission of eight types of reportable incidents. This includes incidents that occured or are alleged or suspected to have occurred.
The commission received 12,106 reportable incidents during the period – 4,416 priority 1; 7,690 priority 2. This was up from 11,677 reportable incidents during the previous quarter.
Unreasonable amount of force was by far the most reported incident with 7,663 cases recorded.
Quality standards
During the October-December 2022 quarter the commission conducted 362 site audits.
The audits are carried out to check providers’ ongoing compliance with their aged care responsibilities, including the Aged Care Quality Standards.
Most site audits (85 per cent) were conducted in New South Wales (143), Victoria (103) and Queensland (61), reflecting the higher number of services in these states.
Aged care services found to be non-compliant with one or more quality standards dropped by 25 per cent during the period (133 compared to 177) with non-compliance recorded most against Standard 3 – personal and clinical care.
The graphic below breaks down the degree and frequency of non-compliance across each of the eight quality standards.
During the final quarter of 2022, the commission lodged 67 non-compliance notices against residential aged care services, among 145 enforceable regulatory actions.
Home care
Complaints made against home care providers rose by almost a hundred during the period – 948 compared to 849. Of these, 829 were about home care packages.
Among the top 10 complaints:
Care recipients made up the largest complainant group (454), followed by representative or family member (415), others (51), anonymous (28).
During the quarter, the commission finalised 1,041 complaints.
There were 58 quality audits conducted during the period with 45 services found to be non-compliant with one or more quality standard – down from 64 the previous period.
Number of services where non-compliance was found with each quality standard:
During the period, 11 non-compliance notices were lodged against home care providers.
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