The Productivity Commission’s report on the performance of the aged care sector was released overnight on Tuesday, immediately generating negative media coverage.
The media has focused on the 37,833 serious incident notifications received by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission last financial year – most related to “unreasonable use of force”.
In fact, more recent data is also in the public domain. In the September 2022 quarter, 11,677 reports were received – the situation has not improved.
The Serious Incident Response Scheme was introduced for residential care on 1 April 2021. It requires aged care providers to systematically report neglect, abuse, restrictive practices, and inappropriate sexual contact.
The number of incidents doesn’t look good, but the report notes that the number of notifications received “does not necessarily correlate to the number of instances of harm to an older person in aged care. Reports might include multiple notifications of the same matter, allegations of incidents, and situations where incidents occurred but injury was avoided.”
We will take a closer look at the PC report over the course of the week and write in more detail in week’s Weekly SOURCE.
