In December 2022, the federal government introduced star ratings for aged care homes to provide simple, reliable information about the quality of care.
However, a recent report indicates that instead of providing the transparency that older people need to compare and choose an aged care home, the star ratings may actually lead them to choose one that is delivering poor care.
The study, by Adjunct Professor Rodney Jilek, compared the 501 aged care homes on the government’s non-compliance register over 12 months from November 2022 with the star ratings those homes had received.
The government’s new star rating system has been criticised for failing to capture meaningful data.
“We targeted the homes on the non-compliance register mainly because they are supposed to be the worst in the country – they’re all non-compliant – so you would reasonably expect that they would represent the lowest ratings, but 68 homes had 5-stars for compliance and 81 had 4-star compliance ratings,” he said.
The stars are administered by the Department of Health and Aged Care and measure aged care homes against four criteria: resident experience (33 per cent), staffing (22 per cent), quality measures (15 per cent), and compliance with regulations and standards (30 per cent).
Dr Jilek said: “The resident experience measure is completely useless, only 10 per cent of residents are surveyed, and the care provider can control the outcome by cherry-picking the residents”.
He explained that the staffing and quality measures were based on un-vetted provider-supplied data and there was no validation or check measure to ensure it was correct.
The compliance measure is the only component that is provided by an independent body, the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, and they are giving homes five stars for compliance when they have determined that they are non-compliant.
Why some five-star aged care homes are the worst in the country
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16.01.2024
In December 2022, the federal government introduced star ratings for aged care homes to provide simple, reliable information about the quality of care.
However, a recent report indicates that instead of providing the transparency that older people need to compare and choose an aged care home, the star ratings may actually lead them to choose one that is delivering poor care.
The study, by Adjunct Professor Rodney Jilek, compared the 501 aged care homes on the........
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