How has the aged care sector performed from January to March 2022? How many incidents were reported? See the latest statistics in this summary of the Sector Performance report from the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission.

About the Report

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission (Commission) releases a sector performance report quarterly. The report includes data from the Commission’s regulatory and complaints functions, additionally drawing on information from serious incident notifications of the Serious Incident Response Scheme (SIRS). Reports are published at the end of the second month following the end of the previous quarter.

Complaints

All aged care providers are required to have a complaints system in place to resolve complaints internally. The Commission defines a positive complaints culture as one that encourages feedback and uses it as an opportunity to improve. The Commission received no complaints about 64 per cent of providers, making 1,706 services complaint- free!

This quarter had slightly more complaints than the previous quarter (October 2021 – December 2021).

• 978 residential aged care providers received complaints
• A total of 1,679 complaints were submitted
• 55% of complaints were reported by a family member or representative
• 7% of complaints were submitted anonymously
• The state with the lowest ratio of complaints per 100 residents was Western Australia, with a ratio of 0.6. The rest of the ratios varied from 0.8 to 1.43, with the Australian average remaining the same as the previous quarter at 0.89.

The top three categories of complaint issues were:

• Personal and oral hygiene
• Personnel number
• Medication administration and management.

The Commission finalised 1,372 complaints this quarter. Complaints are finalised after the Commission talks to all parties to explain findings and provides written feedback (except when the complainant is satisfied and does not require written feedback).

Reportable Incidents

Under the SIRS, there are eight types of reportable incidents that providers must notify the Commission of:

• Unreasonable use of force
• Neglect
• Psychological or emotional abuse
• Unlawful sexual conduct or inappropriate sexual contact
• Unexplained absence
• Inappropriate restrictive practices
• Unexpected death
• Stealing or financial coercion.

Reportable incidents fall into two categories: Priority 1 (more serious and must be reported within 24 hours) and Priority 2 (less serious and must be reported within 30 days). In the January to March quarter:

• 9,752 reportable incidents were reported
• 3,900 of these were Priority 1 and 5,852 were Priority 2
• the most common form of incident was “unreasonable use of force”, with 63% of reports across Priority 1 and 2 falling into that category
• the next most reported type of Priority 1 and 2 incident was “neglect”, making up 15% of reports
• the Commission had a regulatory or enforcement response to 1,434 incidents, with 1,402 of these being monitoring and engagement.

Non-Compliance

This quarter four new services were accredited, and 275 services were reaccredited, with 249 of them being reaccredited for three or more years. Of the 693 site visits to residential aged care providers, there were 99 services where non-compliance was found.

The top five areas for non-compliance with the Quality Standards were:

• Standard 3(3)(a) Safe and effective personal and clinical care
• Standard 3(3)(b) High impact or high prevalence risks managed effectively
• Standard 8(3)(d) Risk management systems and practices
• Standard 7(3)(a) Number and mix of workforce
• Standard 2(3)(a) Assessment and planning informs safe and effective services.

Standard 3: Personal Care and Clinical Care was the most common of the eight Quality Standards for non-compliance. Within Standard 3, the most common area of non-compliance was “(3)a Safe and effective personal and clinical care”. Performance assessments found that 42 per cent of the decisions regarding this area were non-compliant.

The Sector’s Performance Report - Value

What is the value of the Sector Performance report for aged care providers? Broadly, it helps providers get an understanding of how the sector is performing overall, but more importantly the report provides an opportunity to reflect on a facility’s individual performance, including areas where the facility might be at risk.

Exploring information about the ‘top categories’ of complaints, reportable incidents or non-compliance areas in line with the Quality Standards provides unique opportunities to assess and evaluate your organisation’s current performance.

As part of this process consider:

• the currency of relevant policies and procedures
• staff training and, where relevant, competency
• workforce sufficiency and capability
• audits and other quality control activities in line with the flagged, most frequent non-compliance Quality Standards and/or requirements to evaluate your performance or practices in these areas
• reviewing your data, including incident and complaints system outcomes, to evaluate your own performance across the identified areas. What does the data show you for this quarter and how does it compare with the performance of the aged care industry generally?