Residential aged care providers have been advised to look closely at their care minute targets after an “administrative error” saw the wrong minutes published for some services.
Last Friday, 1 December, the Department of Health and Aged Care issued an alert advising that a “data transmission issue between Services Australia and the Department meant that the care minute targets published on My Aged Care for some aged care services were “out by a small margin”.
“This means that in some instances the previously published care minutes targets excluded and/or included some care recipients incorrectly. This resulted in residential care services’ published care minutes targets being either under or over the actual care minutes targets,” said the Department.
The Department told The Weekly SOURCE that no service has seen a decrease in their overall Star Rating as a result of the error with the issue now rectified.
“For Quarter 4 (April-June 2023), due to be published this month, 40 services will see an increase of their Staffing or Quality measures sub-ratings, by 1 star; 13 will see a decrease in their Staffing or Quality Measures sub-ratings, by 1 star,” it said.
The published care minute targets for the October-December 2023 quarter (Q2 of 2023-24) have changed for some services, but in the majority of cases, this was by one minute or less, the Department added.
Some providers targeted by regulator
Rob Covino, Partner at Mirus Australia – which alerted the Department to the issue after one of its clients pointed to inconsistencies in their care minutes data – points out that with an average facility size of 80 beds across the sector, those minutes could add up to hours and even whole shifts within a roster.
“Some of my clients have had contact with the agency [the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission] that they are now also second guessing that perhaps, that contact was not supposed to happen,” he said.
A Q&A from the Department about the error also underlines its expectation that providers understand and calculate their own targets – a fact that Rob says most of the sector would be unaware of.
The Department has now issued a Care Minute Target Calculator to assist providers in calculating their targets, but Rob questions the use of Excel to make these calculations.
“Even a small facility has in excess of $10 million of revenue coming into it,” he stated. “What other business in an industry is managing that level of money through spreadsheets?”
“There will need to be an ongoing discussion with the Department to work out together how each facility within a provider has achieved that rate if there is variances on it.”
The error is not the first time that a problem of this nature has been reported – in July, Star Rating provider previews were “temporarily paused” by the Department to address “a technical issue”.
