The Registry of Senior Australians has teamed up with StewartBrown, two aged care providers and four other partners for a five-year commonwealth funded project examining the impact of workforce on older people’s care quality and health outcomes.
The ROSA research centre – which is based at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute – integrates data from the aged care, health care and social welfare sectors to provide an full picture of ageing-related outcomes.
It has secured a $3 million Medical Research Future Fund National Critical Research Infrastructure grant – announced on Tuesday – to update and expand its platform to include StewartBrown’s workforce data plus quality indicator, funding and star ratings data.
The grant allows ROSA to expand Australia’s first multisectoral data research infrastructure and undertake this groundbreaking study, said ROSA director Professor Maria Inacio.
“We know that workforce affects quality but an in-depth, population level investigation in an Australian setting hasn’t been done. This will give us enormous capability to do that now. So it’s very exciting,” Professor Inacio told Australian Ageing Agenda.
The project – which aims to drive quality aged care – will:
- identify optimal workforce components such as care minutes, skill mix and models of care and the levels required to improve quality and safety in residential and home care settings
- identify national variation in aged care quality and workforce best practices
- examine the impact of workforce related reforms on aged care quality.
In addition to StewartBrown, project partners include South Australian aged care providers ECH and ACH Group, SA Health’s Office for Ageing Well, peak bodies Council on the Ageing South Australia and Aged and Community Care Providers Association, and this publication.
An update and boost to datasets
On the backend, the funding supports ROSA updating its existing datasets for another five years plus adding new data related to recent reforms – including Star Ratings, the National Aged Care Mandatory Quality Indicator Program and Australian National Aged Care Classification for the residential aged care sector.
It also includes linking to StewartBrown’s quarterly aged care performance survey data for residential and home care providers back to 2010.
Professor Inacio welcomed the opportunity to partner with aged care sector benchmarking and accountancy firm StewartBrown to undertake this work.
“They’ve been incredibly supportive of this idea of us overlaying the information they’ve collected over many years from providers to look at opportunities to improve quality of care and the pressure points in relationship to workforce and quality,” Professor Inacio told AAA.
“We’re focusing on looking at the number of hours that have been dedicated to residents at different facilities, and also in home care packages.”
The ROSA team will then overlay that data with its own data on the relationships between investment and workforce at different types of services and its outcome monitoring system.
Professor Inacio has also welcomed Australian Ageing Agenda’s involvement in the project. AAA’s role involves updating the sector’s stakeholders on the project through its print and online channels.
“Our partnership with AAA is unique and exciting. AAA will play a key role in sharing the findings of this work to the sector and ensure that our findings can quickly find their way into the hands of those who are actively involved in caring for older Australians and are ultimately affected by the elements we are studying.”
Australian Ageing Agenda is also excited and proud to partner on this groundbreaking project, said AAA editor Natasha Egan.
“We regularly hear from our readers and contacts about pressures related to workforce and the actual and potential impacts this is having on organisations and individuals,” she said.
“We’re looking forward to engaging with the sector about this project and keeping stakeholders informed about its progress and findings over the next five years.”
As one of the key communication partners, AAA will also advise on the development and implementation of the dissemination plan.
In addition to this project, the new updated contemporary datasets available for another five years will support existing and new work, said Professor Inacio.
“Having these resources updated and with new elements added means that a lot of other research can be done.”
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