The Aged Care Quality standards are “absolutely central” to the way in which aged care providers govern their service and the way in which operators are held to account for the care they’re delivering, Aged Care Quality and Safety Commissioner Janet Anderson told an industry conference Wednesday.
Speaking before delegates at the inaugural national conference of the Aged & Community Care Association in Adelaide, Ms Anderson acknowledged that “it has been a challenging time, there is no question … the level of scrutiny that the sector has been subjected to over the last two or three years is unprecedented.”
Appearing at the Adelaide Convention Centre on day one of the three-day industry event, Ms Anderson told providers what they needed to be aiming for when it came to complying to the mandatory standards.
As the screen displayed the above multicoloured pyramid, Ms Anderson told delegates: “The green is our happy place. The green is where we educate and communicate and inform and engage and also resolve low-level complaints.”
But, she explained, when an aged care facility finds itself at the top of the triangle, it spells trouble.
“So as a provider becomes less able or willing to comply with the standards, we become more attentive with our engagement. We watch you more closely, but we also intervene with greater alacrity and intensity.”
Legislated in 2018 and introduced in July 2019, the Aged Care Quality Standards address eight key areas:
- consumer dignity and choice
- ongoing assessment and planning
- personal care and clinical care
- services and supports for daily living
- organisation’s service environment
- feedback and complaints
- human resources
- organisational governance.
Showing the above slide, Ms Anderson told delegates: “You never ever, ever want to be bottom left … You are, by definition, failing as a service.”
Should a facility find itself in that position, Ms Anderson said the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission wouldn’t trust that the provider understands its obligations, and what it needed to do “to deliver a high-quality experience.”
Expanding on trust, Ms Anderson said, equally, providers should have trust and confidence in the way the commission regulates. “You deserve to have trust that we are objective, and impartial,” she said. “That we’re informed by evidence, that we’re confident, we’re capable, we’re consistent. I get it. We continue to be on an improvement journey, just as I’m looking for you to be on an improvement journey.”
She added: “We also look for providers to be motivated voluntarily to comply and strive for improvement because, you know, it delivers a better consumer experience, not because the regulator’s watching.”
“We would love nothing more than for you to be high performing.”
A revised version of the Aged Care Quality Standards will open for public consultation from Monday 17 October. The revised standards are based on feedback provided by stakeholders across the aged care sector with a desire for the quality standards to be:
- easier to understand
- relevant to more aged care services
- more measurable
- easier to implement.
Ms Anderson told delegates that the commission wanted, not to browbeat them into compliance, but to help them achieve success. “We would love nothing more than for you to be high performing.” But she added: “Don’t wait for us to come and find you out, get out ahead of us. Do your own due diligence, invest in yourselves.”
Ms Anderson concluded her address by acknowledging that compliance of the quality standards appear “extraordinarily heavy and onerous” right now. However, she told delegates: “I’m actually absolutely confident that over time, it will become manageable, because that’s the way of life. And we’re all working on the same journey.”
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