Provision of Services to Undertake Consumer Experience Interviews

In response to the Royal Commission, the Department of Health is looking to engage the services of a contractor (or consortia) to perform Consumer Experience Interviews (CEI)s with approximately 18,500 aged care residents to inform Consumer Experience Reports (CERs). This process will cover residents across all Commonwealth funded residential aged care services in Australia. This covers approximately 2700 services with a diverse geographic spread.

The Royal Commission highlighted that aged care quality should be ‘defined, understood, funded, delivered and be capable of being measured’. It also highlighted that a lack of data and quality measurement in the system resulted in an inability to determine the extent of substandard care, and a lack of information to inform consumer choice, provider quality improvement Government risk based-regulation and policy development.

The Royal Commission recommended a comprehensive approach to quality measurement and reporting with three linked elements: indicators to measure quality, benchmarking for continuous improvement, and a star rating system for comparing the performance of providers.

In recommendation 94 the Royal Commission outlined that reports on the experience of people receiving care at aged care services should be periodically published. The Government accepted this recommendation. CER reporting will be based on CEI’s across a sample of at least 10 per cent of a residential aged care service’s care recipient population with the intention to present that data through a Star Rating system for consumers in residential aged care by December 2022