You’ve asked for more information about the My Aged Care (MAC) Star Ratings.
So, here it is…
The flaws and inaccuracies of the ratings system are very clear IF you know where to look.
We’ve provided a snapshot of what you don’t see below. This is publicly available information but you need to know where you can find it which isn’t so easy.
We have matched the star rating of some homes against information available on the Aged Care Regulator’s (Aged Care Quality & Safety Commission) webpage and it’s been illuminating.
In addition, the information below is important if you’re considering using the rating system to guide your decision on selecting an aged care home.
As it stands the Aged Care Regulator, ACQSC, can decide to exclude non-compliance issues in the Star Ratings provided the aged care home management shows a ‘genuine commitment’ to resolving the issues!
Of course, when caught out, aged care home management will say they are ‘genuinely committed’; they will make the right noises and have months to ‘remedy’ serious shortfalls.
But we are talking about non-compliance with personal & clinical care and other essential standards which can be a life-or-death matter. And, as our clients’ have experienced, non-compliance findings aren’t necessarily resolved even when many months have been provided to fix issues. Our clients often make similar complaints to the Aged Care Regulator year after year and nothing changes.
SURELY THE PUBLIC HAS A RIGHT TO KNOW WHEN AN AGED CARE HOME IS NON-COMPLIANT? By only reporting on ‘sanctions’ this does not give a true picture of what is happening on the ground.
Not only that, but the Regulator hasn’t even fully assessed aged care homes against ALL standards in each assessment round. This means that the most critical standards such as ‘personal & clinical care’, ‘services & supports for daily living’, ‘consumer dignity & choice’ along with ‘ongoing assessment & planning with consumers’, may not even have been recently assessed.
We have found a 4-star rated home has only been assessed against 2 out of the 8 standards. In another 4-star rated home they are non-compliant in 6 of the 8 standards! How can anyone have faith in the ratings when critical standards are not even being met or assessed?
For full transparency the Aged Care Regulator must publish a list of all complaints it receives about each aged care home, and they must be matched to the aged care home’s star rating.
It is incredibly arduous and not for the faint hearted to go through an ACQSC complaint process so making a complaint in the first place is a difficult decision. The public should be able to see the number and types of complaints against each aged care home. Now, that would be a meaningful measure and would likely vastly improve aged care provider practices.
This information should be linked to all star ratings not buried on another webpage.
Our clients tell us that when choosing a home, they want to know about quality standards compliance and actual resident feedback over all other measures.
And what about the incredibly small sample size of aged care residents who are ‘surveyed’ for these ratings? It is the residents’ experience that should be paramount YET their experience accounts for only 33% of the entire star rating assessment.
What is even more staggering is that there is only a minimum requirement of 10% of residents involved in the ‘Residents’ Experience Survey’ – it has a target of 20% but 10% is just fine.
There are all kinds of exclusions as to why a resident won’t be asked for their experiences and… wait for it… the aged care home management brief the ‘assessors’ as to who meets the criteria!
So, ‘assessors’ come into the aged care home, they’re unknown to the resident, the resident doesn’t know if they can be trusted, they don’t have independent support to provide their feedback as that’s difficult to organise at short notice, and they’re potentially vetted by aged care management so they may not even be approached by an assessor.
If you lived in an aged care home, would you speak out about your experience when there are no safeguards?
Our clients tell us they’re already afraid and are even more fearful that speaking out about anything will make their situation worse.
Some of the feedback we have received from our clients:
- They’re reluctant to speak with survey teams as they’re concerned about reprisals
- They feel they need to say ‘good things’ about their experiences due to reprisal fears and assessors being unknown – this can skew the data into being more positive that it actually is
- It’s not an environment where they feel they can divulge intimate details about their care concerns
- Although the survey is supposed to be ‘private’ and discreet, staff can tell who the survey team speaks with
- They’d like to have someone with them during the survey – but this is very difficult to schedule in advance
- If they don’t leave their rooms, they don’t have the opportunity to read the posters that are supposed to be displayed in advance of the visit
- If they’re unable to read they’re not provided with accessible means of getting information on the visits as it is in poster format
- They don’t know who they can ‘trust’ and will decline an interview if they are unsure what’s happening
Residents who happen to have their door closed (they may be in the bathroom, live with hearing difficulties, or be asleep), who are unwell or who have ‘adverse behaviours’ are excluded. And, of course, don’t forget that the survey team works with management to flag any residents that meet the exclusion criteria!
The idea that this process ‘gives residents a chance to tell us about the care they receive at their Residential Aged Care Home’ (according to a government website) in no way reflects what our clients tell us. It is also entirely possible that the Residents Experience Survey is, at times, completed without the resident even being involved as the assessor can legitimately speak with a resident’s guardian or supporter.
Each star rating should clearly identify how many actual residents have been surveyed.
How can a system, that is designed to reflect the experiences of people living in an aged care home, carry any weight at all when it is entirely possible that the residents themselves are not even involved in the survey.
Our clients tell us it’s a joke and that they have no voice.
What do you think?
Advocacy Tasmania
Our service is free, independent, and confidential, please get in touch if you need us:
Advocacy Tasmania
1800 005 131 (free call)
0457 806 963 (text)