South Australia’s aged care facilities can now receive a quality and safety report that measures their performance against state and national benchmarks.
The report provides results on 12 key indicators and aims to help improve quality, transparency and accountability within the aged care sector.
The team at SAHMRI’s Registry of Senior Australians (ROSA) have been designing the reports (known as an OMS – Outcome Monitoring System) over the past five years and recently released their inaugural report.
The Hospital Research Foundation Group has been proud to support this project to improve the quality of aged care in South Australia, alongside the Federal Government’s NHMRC and MRFF funding bodies.
ROSA Director Professor Maria Inacio said the ROSA OMS was a pragmatic and low burden monitoring and benchmarking system for the sector.
“The individual facility reports are free and we hope they will spark conversations within and between providers regarding best practices,” Prof Inacio said.
“Our ultimate goal is to promote quality improvement, transparency, and accountability for the aged care sector and improve the wellbeing of older Australians.”
The results
The first statewide report covered 4,127 individuals living in 243 permanent residential aged care facilities in South Australia in 2019. The median age was 86 years, 50% had a dementia diagnosis, and their median length of stay in care was 147 days.
Some of the key findings included:
- 11.6% of residents (489) had at least one fall requiring hospitalisation
- 4.1% (174) had at least one fracture requiring hospitalisation
- 4.8% of the people with dementia (101) were hospitalised for a delirium or dementia event
- 51.1% (1437) of residents used an antibiotic
- 37.9% (1437) experienced a high sedative load
- 0.6% (25) experienced premature death
Click here to see the full report.
If you are a South Australian provider, you may be eligible to receive a report tailored to your facility. This individualised report provides state and national benchmarks for comparison. Simply download the request form and email the ROSA team at [email protected]
The reports are not shared publicly (yet), however consumers are encouraged to ask their facilities for their results to promote transparency.
The reports are planned to be released annually or every 18 months.
Thank you to our donors for bringing this important project to life! If you wish to improve care for older South Australians through projects such as this, please make a kind donation today through our website.
