News

In Case You Missed It – Below are links to recent articles on Aged Care and Healthcare that may be of interest:

Who’s watching? South Australia to debate making CCTV option for all aged care residents

Should Aged Care Workers Be Allowed To Attend Resident Funerals?

Deadly legionella bacteria detected in 170 Queensland hospitals and aged care centres

Govt adds new safeguards to My Health Record

Senate forces My Health Record opt-out extension

‘There’s no personal care for her’: Life for a 102-year-old in Bupa aged care

Bill offers opportunity to ‘opt in’ for CCTV in residents rooms

Royal commission leads to spike in complaints

Resident medication issues raised with Minister

ACFI update challenges pain management practices

Breaking Royal Commission news heard at ITAC 2018

Providers asked to give a five-year history of cases of poor care

The Royal Commission will hold a preliminary hearing in Adelaide in December 2018.

The Commission has written to the 100 largest providers of age services nationally asking them to submit a range of information by 7th January.

All other service providers will be asked to submit information at a later date in February.

Some of the questions asked:

• Since 1 July 2013, have there been any occasions when your service or outlet has provided substandard care, including mistreatment and all forms of abuse?
• Since 1 July 2013, has your service or outlet received any complaints or had complaints made about them in relation to substandard care, including mistreatment and all forms of abuse?
• Since 1 July 2013, what (if anything) has your service or outlet done: (a) to ensure that the services it provides are of high quality and safe?
• As at 30 June 2018, did your service or outlet provide services to people younger than 65?
• Does your service or outlet experience difficulties in accessing health care for care recipients?
• What further changes (if any) could your service or outlet make to provide services of higher quality and greater safety and to improve individual outcomes?

Read more:

23 NOV 2018 – Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety – Letter (.pdf)

NOTE:

Manad Plus users should be able to find a lot of this data easily if you have been documenting everything, see:

• Feedback (Complaint records)
• Adverse Events (Incident records)
• Personnel Courses & Personnel Communication
• Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) Plans
• ACFI
• Audits
• Case Conference
• Maintenance
• Birthday Report

New single Aged Care Quality Standards will empower senior Australians and ensure responsibility and accountability for their care, as the Morrison Government implements the most significant changes to quality standards in two decades.

The boards and governing bodies of aged care providers will be clearly accountable for every one of their consumers’ safety and quality of care.

Providers delivering clinical care will be mandated to maintain quality clinical frameworks including infection control, open disclosure to consumers, their families and representatives, and minimising the use of restraint.

Quality care provision will be paramount, with aged care providers required to prove their care and services are safe, effective and focussed on their consumers, including through unannounced visits.

Read more:

New Quality Standards for Better Aged Care (.pdf)

The Aged Care Financing Authority (ACFA) report on the review into respite care is now available online.

Read more:

ACFA Respite Review report now available

ACFA’s Report on respite for aged care recipients (.pdf)

A new era in Australian aged care is beginning, with legislation passing Parliament to establish the nation’s first, independent Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission.

The unified new Commission will begin operations on 1 January 2019, with funding of almost $300 million over four years, including an additional $48.2 million to expand monitoring, secure aged care quality and employ a network of dozens of additional senior compliance officers.

The Commission will be underpinned by a new aged care Charter of Rights and is set to enforce a new, single set of Quality Standards, the first upgrade of standards in 20 years.

The Commission will integrate and streamline the governance roles of the current Aged Care Complaints Commissioner and the Australian Aged Care Quality Agency creating a new one stop shop. From January 2020, it will also enforce the Department of Health’s aged care licensing responsibilities.

Read more:

Powerful New Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission (.pdf)

The high-risk season for major Australian weather events and bushfires is approaching. It is important that all aged care providers are well prepared and able to respond to emergency events.

Maintaining quality care under these circumstances requires effective emergency risk management and planning.

Read more:

Industry alert: emergency planning for aged care services

Risk Management for Emergency Events in Aged Care

In these issues:

• Ministerial launch of OPAN’s training videos and framework – 15 November
• Webinar: updates on My Aged Care operations and Aged Care Quality Standards – recording now available
• Aged Care Workforce Strategy released
• Aged Services Industry Reference Committee announced
• Have your say – dementia services survey – closing soon

Home Care:

• New requirements for home care information for the service finder
• GST and home care
• Reminder: Mandatory publication of home care pricing information by 30 November 2018

Residential Care:

• ACFI Complex Health Care – Pain management (12.3 and 12.4)

Read more:

Information for Aged Care Providers – Issue 2018/20 (.pdf)

Information for Aged Care Providers – Issue 2018/21 (.pdf)

The Minister for Families and Social Services, the Hon Paul Fletcher MP, and the Assistant Minister for Social Services, Housing and Disability Services, the Hon Sarah Henderson MP, have announced the Carer Gateway regional delivery partners grant opportunity to establish a new service delivery network for carers.

Read more:

Carer Gateway regional delivery partner grant opportunity and online industry briefing

The Aged Care (Single Quality Framework) Reform Act 2018, which lays the foundation for the introduction of the new Aged Care Quality Standards, was passed by Parliament.

Now that this has occurred, we will be adding these new references (Standards and Outcomes) to an updated version of Manad Plus v5.6 before the end of the year.

This will allow those who wish to start creating their own internal Audit tools (in preparation of 1 July 2019) to map your templates to the new Outcomes. You will also be able to map these to your Meetings and CQI Plans.

We discussed at our most recent User Group Meetings the many features and areas already available in Manad Plus where you can start recording data (if not already using these features) to support the new July-2019 outcome requirements. Such has:

• Documenting choice in assessments
• Tracking of individual consumer schedules and completion of these task in the Organiser
• Recording consumer involvement and/or authorisation in assessment/care plan creation
• Case Conferences
• Tracking and managing Risks
• Documenting Feedback correctly
• Linking key events/data to your CQI Plan

If you were not able to attend the User Group Meetings or are still unsure of the current features available to you and your staff that will assist in the outcome requirements commencing next year then please call (1300 62 62 32) and speak with your dedicated Manad Plus Client Manager, they will be able to take you through these key areas.

We are here to help and support all our users during this transition period to:

• align your various systems, policies and practices with the new standards and where Manad Plus can be used, and
• support your staff to understand the requirements of the new standards and how Manad Plus is best utilised.

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you have any questions or suggestions for new features you would like us to look at to support the upcoming changes.

NOTE:

The Australian Aged Care Quality Agency (AACQA) is also reviewing the self-assessment tools currently available on their website to assist approved providers with self-auditing of practices and processes against the Standards. A revised tool will be piloted to align with the new Aged Care Quality Standards and will hopefully be available on the AACQA website before the end of 2018 for everyone to access.

IMPORTANT:

Version 5.6 has now been available for a few months now, are you still yet to upgrade from v5.5? if you haven’t then please contact the Help Desk team to arrange for the latest version to be pushed out to your server, support@manad.com.au

In Case You Missed It – Below are links to recent articles on Aged Care and Healthcare that may be of interest:

Providers told to set up ‘war room’ as royal commission looms

Australians lack trust in aged care system

Report reveals aged care lacks trust and transparency

Work-life balance key to retaining aged care staff

You don’t need much money to be charged full freight in aged care

Aged care quality and safety commissioner appointed

Aged care costs: most opt for ‘pay as you go’

Inquiry recommends minimum RN requirement, funding review