A new online resource promises to transform how Australians monitor and evaluate the quality of care for older people. Launched by the Australian Consortium for Aged Care (ACAC), the freely accessible platform—called the ACAC Quality Indicator Repository—aims to bolster efforts by researchers, providers and the public to track care standards more accurately.
Developed through a three-year project funded by the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF), the repository is jointly led by the Registry of Senior Australians (ROSA) Research Centre at SAHMRI and the Caring Futures Institute at Flinders University. It brings together 1,326 quality indicators across critical care settings, including residential aged care, home care, palliative care and more. Additional indicators are set to be published later this year.
“These reforms require efforts to monitor and assess their impact and having a resource like the ACAC Quality Indicator Repository allows us to see the breadth of available measures, their characteristics, and how they can be applied to undertake these evaluations,” said ROSA Director, Professor Maria Inacio.
Quality indicators—used worldwide—are essential for gauging the safety, effectiveness, efficiency, equity, person-centredness and timeliness of care. According to Professor Inacio, the repository marks an important milestone in coordinating nationwide efforts to ensure better experiences for older Australians.
“The release of the ACAC Quality Indicator Repository is an important step in addressing longstanding calls for an evidence-based framework to measure and improve the experiences of older Australians,” she said.
Over the last few years, ACAC has conducted a series of scoping literature reviews to identify indicators spanning eight key areas of older people’s care. The first published review, which examined quality indicators for care transitions, appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association. Future plans involve refining this resource with input from clinical, consumer, industry and academic experts, ultimately guiding a national approach to high-quality aged care.
The project represents a broad collaboration between research teams at ROSA, Flinders University, Macquarie University, the University of Queensland, the University of South Australia, the University of New South Wales and the Australian Dementia Network Registry. Digital agency Mango Chutney developed the repository’s online platform, offering a user-friendly way for stakeholders to explore and employ the data in pursuit of improved care standards.
Ritchelle is a Content Producer for Healthcare Channel, Australia’s premier resource of information for healthcare.
