The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission (ACQSC) has written to home care providers that have not reported any incidents under the Serious Incident Response Scheme (SIRS), warning them to review their incident management systems and processes.
You can read the letter here.
Home care providers, like residential aged care providers, must report eight types of incidents, including unreasonable use of force, inappropriate sexual conduct, neglect, and inappropriate restrictive practices, to the regulator under SIRS, which was extended to home care from 1 December 2022 – over 12 months ago.
"It may be that your service/s has/have not experienced any or many reportable incidents," the letter states.
However, the Commission adds that reporting may not be occurring due to a lack of systems to identify risks, lack of awareness about responsibilities under the SIRS, or a lack of understanding about what constitutes a reportable incident.
"Every provider, irrelevant of the quality of their care and services, will have incidents and some of them will be reportable," Cynthia Payne (pictured below), Managing Director of aged care advisory firm Anchor Excellence, told The SOURCE.
Many home care providers are fulfilling their reporting requirements, however they are dependent on workers in the field recognising reportable incidents and reporting them.
"Providers should have a really clear incident classification table," Cynthia said.
The fact that some home care providers are still operating with paper-based systems could also be contributing to a lack of reporting.
A lot of home care providers' Care Management Systems (CMS) are still "catching up" with the standards of those in residential aged care, Cynthia said.
There may also be gaps in SIRS reporting for online care platforms that pass incidents reported to them on to home care providers.
Residential aged care providers have been operating under the SIRS since April 2021.
