The way you search for aged care homes is about to change
Key Points
The Government Aged Care Star rating system established in December 2022 offers a transformative insight into individual aged care home quality.
The coverage of 220,000 aged care places within more than 2,600 providers is incredibly well resourced and up to date.
Quarterly release of information gives the public a change to track changes in quality in providers around them and further afield.
The most recent ratings release provides the opportunity to assess changes in the quality of aged care.
Later Life Advice has taken a closer look at the information, and ways to increase its value to Australians trying to make an assessment of aged care quality in their area.
Your key to assessing the quality of residential aged care is here : aged care Star Ratings
The Aged Care Overall rating is made up of 4 key areas.
The aged care Star Ratings system is spearheaded by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, with a budget of $330m and a team of over 1400.
The key measure of the Aged Care Star rating system is the “Overall Star Rating” - a measure that captures 4 key measures of residential aged care provider performance - Resident Experience, Compliance, Staffing and Quality Measures.
Consider this information includes survey of 10% of aged care residents, and collects compliance information daily.
A close look at a listing of an aged care provider via the myagedcare website (try searching for a provider in your local area here), you will see tabs showing more detailed information in the various sub-categories.
As an example, in terms of Quality Measures, you can find information on a range of areas - such as pressure injuries, physical restraint, unplanned weight loss, falls and other major injuries and medication management with data comparing to national average
Simply put - there is no other agency that could come close to providing such detailed data.
The depth and timeliness of this information is the best resource for Australians making an assessment of the quality of residential aged care providers.
Other ways of researching aged care provider quality are letting people down
Search engines are letting us down - it’s amazing how much of the results we see now are advertisements, sponsored content, or content that has managed to climb its way to the top of the pile through some kind of optimisation. For something as important as finding the right aged care home for a loved one, this is never going to be of any use.
However it gets worse. There are guides to be found online to help in the search for a provider - and once again, they are not working for you, the person doing the search, but they work for the providers, with sponsored, premium, platinum placement. Priority is based on who pays, not who is the highest quality.
Finally - there are services to find a provider for you. Free services - to you. However, these are also businesses that rely on revenue, and this revenue comes from agreements from aged care providers. Here’s the thing - not all providers want to pay. How can you trust these experts to be objective - even though they say they are?
The value in Government Aged Care Star ratings
These 5 ratings provide a whole lot of opportunity to help you organise your search.
Firstly - it’s an easy way to compare one provider with another.
Secondly - when looking at ratings by sub-category, you have the opportunity to be aware of any areas where there is a shortfall, and make and ask the right questions.
Thirdly - with national data released quarterly, you get the chance to track changes in the quality of aged care in your area, or where you may have a loved one
The question is - where do you start?
Unlocking the value in Aged Care Star ratings
The amount of up to date information available on Australian aged care is vast. This is valuable - and also overwhelming.
The solution is to use that information to make it easier for Australians starting the search for aged care homes.
We have been helping clients with unbiased help in understanding how government rules impact their aged care pathways.
Our next objective is to get involved with making aged care home search effective, and free from bias. Finally, the Aged Care Star rating data provides the opportunity