What is best practice in Aged Care?

The title of this article is reflective metaphorically of chasing a rainbow that never ends, perfect in design yet keeps us guessing as to where the rainbow ends, similar to the Aged Care sector, though we can blame much of it on the stormy clouds of the government regarding insufficient funding or poor processes that clouds our perfect rainbow the best in class Aged and Home Care provider.

There is no doubt its a competitive market over 1,800 Aged care providers and 863 Home care providers as at 30 June 2019 vying for your elderly family member as a consumer to their business. There is no doubt the Royal Commission shone a light on the things that are wrong with Aged care and 148 recommendations later, we have committees, bureaucrats, working parties, consultants all working towards making aged care better.... better funded, better focus on person centred care, better staffing ratios, a better experience.

Are we aiming for best practice, if so, who is the benchmark?..... do we know? or is that yet to be determined surely the Aged Care Quality Standards are not the only barometer of sustainable person centred aged care or best practice.

When you review Stewart Brown Survey December 2020, agree its of a small subset of Aged and Home care providers the main metrics to consider is financial - ACFI Revenue, Labour, Expenditure, Daily Living Expenses including catering and cleaning, Accommodation Costs. We are told that approx 60% of all Aged Care providers are demonstrating negative EBITDA ( provides a rawer , clearer indication of earnings) however there are 40% who have a positive EBITDA an indication that they are managing financials well hopefully not at the expense of quality of care for our elderly.

Our regional and remote Aged care providers are impacted significantly due to shortage of staff both carers and clinical staff and the lack of services, increase in costs, smaller pool of residents with regards to occupancy impact there financial viability.

The challenges to get to best practice in this sector from a financial, person centred care, clinical, staffing ratio and retention, continuous improvement, innovation, digital transformation and service offering are quite large, however it is possible for Aged and Home Care Providers to demonstrate leadership and share information on creating the best practice model that we could all learn from to transform Aged Care into a sector we can all be proud of and leave out the competitive nature of business to advance the great good for the people who deserve our respect, care and support, our elderly community.

There is one thing for certain not one person or provider will be able to solve the challenges to create best practice, it will take an army of people working collaboratively and are opened to change, transformation, new ideas and let go of all your previous biases as we enter a once in a generation opportunity to effect change.

Lets go from "Good to Great" as author Jim Collins wrote in the book of the same name. Follow the rainbow that leads us to best practice and world leaders in Aged Care.

I'm ready... are you? .... keen to work with your organisations to make this happen.