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MEASURING QUALITY OF LIFE AND QUALITY OF CARE EXPERIENCE FOR OLDER ADULTS USING AGED CARE SERVICES.
In response to the recommendations in the final report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, the Department of Health and Aged Care has now expanded the aged National Quality Indicators Program to incorporate several non-clinical measures, including the measurement of quality of care experience and quality of life. This expanded Quality Indicator program will roll out in residential aged care nationally from April 2023.
The instruments selected to measure these constructs are the Quality of life – Aged Care Consumers (QOL-ACC) and the Quality of Care Experience – Aged Care Consumers (QCE-ACC). Both instruments were developed by researchers at the Caring Futures Institute at Flinders University.
The QOL-ACC was developed for both home care and residential aged care and, as it is preference- based, can be used for economic evaluation as well as a quality indicator. Australian aged care providers can access the tools via the Department of Health and Aged Care website. The instruments can also be licensed for use by other organisations and are free to use for academic researchers.
HOW DO WE MEASURE NON-CLINICAL OUTCOMES IN THE AGED CARE SECTOR?
The recent Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety’s ‘Final Report: Care, Dignity and Respect’ recommends the routine collection of quality of life data (Recommendation 22.2c) as part of quality assessments in aged care.
The Commission also recommended that our Quality of Care Experience instrument, developed during a project for the Royal Commission in 2020, be adopted as a valid measure of older people’s quality of care experience (Final Report 3A, page 133).
