Australia is at a pivotal moment for the aged care sector in Australia. Four years on from the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, where data consistency and reliability were brought into sharp focus, the ongoing lack of data standardisation is a critical issue hindering the digital transformation of care and support services for older Australians.
The recently released Interim Report into Delivering more quality care, more efficiently, by the Productivity Commission recommends that the Australian Government should pursue greater alignment in quality and safety regulation of the care economy to improve efficiency and outcomes.
There still exists an urgent need to address:
- The inconsistency in the way that the functional needs of older Australians are assessed
- The deficiency of clinical data standards
- The lack of a valid minimum data set to support regulatory reporting
- The lack of interoperability with other health care providers
- The need to be able to collect data once and confidently re-use it many times.
Standardising and streamlining how information is stored and shared between settings will reduce the burden on aged care residents, carers, staff, and providers.
The DHCRC is supporting a number of research and development initiatives to help shape the roadmap for the adoption of standardised aged care data across the aged care sector.
Our Journey to Date
If you would like to find out more about the acceleration of the digital transformation of aged care, click the links below that will take you directly to recent reports commissioned by the DHCRC:
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