The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission (ACQSC) has revealed contractors have declared 528 potential, perceived or actual conflicts of interest since 2021, when the current procurement process commenced.
The information was revealed in response to a question to Aged Care Quality and Safety Commissioner Janet Anderson (pictured above) from Greens Senator Janet Rice during Senate Estimates on 26 October 2023.
The response states, "Declared interests have included organisational conflicts where the supplier was engaged to provide services to an aged care service or approved provider, organisational conflicts where the supplier is engaged by government, key personnel conflicts where individuals involved in the delivery of the services have material personal interests e.g. employment, financial, relationships, memberships and voluntary activities.
"Where a conflict is identified for a supplier in relation to a particular site audit, the Commission does not assign the audit to that supplier.
"Instead, the Commission either assigns the audit to an alternative supplier with no conflict or conducts the audit with its own workforce."
Individual third-party Quality Assessor conflicts of interest are declared separately, the Commission said.
In Senate Estimates last October, Ms Anderson told Senate Estimates third-party assessors conducted just over 1,000 audits in 2022-23 of a total of around 1,500.
The contractors are hired through workforce suppliers RSM, HDAA, SAI Global and KPMG, although SAI Global is no longer a supplier, the Commissioner told Senate Estimates at the time.
The number of assessments conducted by third-party assessors is expected to drop to around 600 this financial year.
Last week, the Department of Health and Aged Care confirmed to the SOURCE that since November 2022, nearly 1,000 questions from Community Affairs Legislation and Finance Public Administration Committees remain unanswered.
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