Australia’s aged care industry faces a critical turning point as experts call for urgent standardisation of data collection methods to improve care quality and efficiency. A new report highlights how inconsistent assessment practices are hampering efforts to enhance care outcomes for older Australians.
The Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre (DHCRC) has released findings from its five-year Aged Care Data Compare (ACDC) research project, revealing significant challenges in how functional abilities of older Australians are assessed and recorded across different care facilities.
“The ACDC project has been running for five years, in two phases, the second of which completes in June when we conclude the piloting of a Quality Indicator (QI) App, providing near-real time QI data to help better inform care decisions,” said DHCRC CEO Annette Schmiede.
“The learnings from ACDC are many. But the overriding one is that to scale the DHCRC QI App the aged care sector needs to be using common data items – and with the same language used by everyone – captured at the point of care and reused for all other information needs,” she added.
These findings echo concerns raised by the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, which identified problems with substandard care and called for stronger accountability measures based on reliable data. Despite these recommendations, progress has been slow.
“Four years on and Australia is at a real tipping point when it comes to aged care policy,” Schmiede said. “The current lack of data standardisation in aged care is a critical issue hindering quality of care and efficient service delivery.”
To address these persistent challenges, the DHCRC commissioned Semantic Consulting to advise on implementing a national, evidence-based functional assessment framework. Their report recommends adopting interRAI, a standardised assessment system already used in countries including Belgium, New Zealand, Ireland, Finland, Singapore, Switzerland, the United States and Canada.
“This report underscores the urgency of addressing the need for a standardised functional assessment framework through an evidence-based approach,” said Schmiede. The report recommends interRAI as “a research-backed suite of standardised functional assessments and screening tools” with proven international implementation.
The DHCRC has committed to developing a prototype SMART on FHIR app that aged care software vendors can easily integrate into their systems. This application would incorporate lessons learned from the ACDC Project and include interRAI assessment instruments.
“Addressing data challenges across the aged care sector is both imperative and urgent,” Schmiede emphasised. “To effectively achieve this, we need an industry that is united in its commitment to adopt a national consistent approach to data collection and functional assessment. We hope by coming together we can bring tangible change that ultimately delivers better care outcomes for patients.”
Ritchelle is a Content Producer for Healthcare Channel, Australia’s premier resource of information for healthcare.
