No Room for Complacency in Aged Care Compliance

Non-compliance in the aged care sector has jumped a staggering 51% from March 2022 to April 2023.

The latest non-compliance and regulatory action register, issued by The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission (ACQSC), has seen a dramatic increase in providers receiving non-conformance notifications. From 1st July 2022 to 31st April 2023, a total of 1,155 residential and home service providers were deemed noncompliant, compared to 764 from 1st July 2021 to 31st March 2022.

Coinciding with overall market dispersion, New South Wales-based providers currently make up the highest register portion at 35%, followed by 23% in Victoria at 14% in Queensland. Residential service providers comprised 77%, compared to 23% home service providers. 

Standard 8 of the Aged Care Quality Standards – which deals with organisational governance – was the most cited non-compliance, impacting 420 providers. Comparatively, only 192 providers were cited against Standard 8 during the previous year (March ending) period, representing a 118% increase.  

Good governance goes hand-in-hand with compliance.

Indeed, governance lays the foundations for organisations to maintain the systems, frameworks and processes needed to assess, monitor and drive improvement in the quality and safety of care and services. But good governance is also good for business. It fosters transparency, accountability and engagement; it builds trust with employees, clients and broader stakeholders and sets a clear path toward excellence.

Conversely, poor governance and the resulting non-compliance can have significant detriment for aged care organisations: adversely affecting government grants and funding, causing a decline in resident numbers, creating difficulty with attracting and retaining quality staff, drawing higher regulatory scrutiny, or potentially generating legal or criminal litigation.

These ongoing market challenges have forced many smaller distressed aged care providers to sell their operations to larger, more experienced operators – potentially at lower valuation than deserved. However, as these organisations grow and face further regulatory tightening, it’s only a matter of time before even the most experienced operators struggle to stay on top of compliance obligations. 

Compliance is certainly a challenging feat, especially when most organisations still rely on messy spreadsheets and manual data management practices. What the industry needs to shift the trend in the appropriate direction is to consider how the right technology can play a crucial role in compliance.

Compliance technology has emerged as a powerful ally for aged care businesses in this digital era. With its ability to streamline and automate processes, enhance transparency and drive accountability, the right technology can offer a transformative path toward achieving and maintaining compliance. 

SaaS solutions such as those offered by Diligent – a global leader in governance, risk and compliance (GRC) – can help Australian aged care facilities of all sizes to maintain compliance standards more efficiently and cost-effectively.

Diligent provides end-to-end solutions across industries, including a dedicated solution for aged care operations to meet, measure and manage compliance against the Aged Care Quality Standards.

This solution provides many critical benefits to aged care organisations across a range of areas including:   

Compliance Review: 

• Pull data from key business applications into a single source of truth to improve data quality, accuracy and control.
• Quickly distribute compliance attestations and evidence tasks to the relevant facility management team members.
• Create issue/gap remediation workflows, assign ownership and centrally manage through to resolution.
• Generate self-assessment reports with a single click to demonstrate self-assessed compliance rating, identified issues and remediation activities. 

Surveys, Analysis and Workflow Automation: 

• Generate and automate customer surveys for satisfaction, contentment and issues they are experiencing.
• Identify and keep track of collected data using qualitative metrics and trends over time.
• Report on outcomes and link to compliance.
• Automatically trigger follow-up actions based on individual responses or the appropriate team member.  

Board and Executive Reporting: 

• Aggregate scores and current issues across different facilities.
• Identify macro trends across various cross-sections (e.g., per facility or per compliance standard).
• Effectively communicate high-priority issues/risks.
• Securely and effortlessly publish customised dashboards for executive/leadership oversight. 

Whether you’re operating in the aged care sector or another health subindustry, don’t let the cost of non-conformance impact your organisation. Instead, contact Diligent today to discuss how their GRC solutions can help you to overcome your compliance challenges.

Ritchelle Drilon

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Ritchelle is a Content Producer for Healthcare Channel, Australia’s premier resource of information for healthcare.

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