Our six year contract with the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) involved reviewing the quality service delivery of approximately 700 community service organisations across Australia contracted to the DVA to provide community nursing and personal care services to veterans. Our role focused on providing practical education and advice to service providers in achieving quality care standards and in complying with the DVA guidelines.
AHA developed a comprehensive suite of tools, aids and checklists to ensure the smooth operation of all aspects of the assessment program. This was a complex development process as the DVA National Service Guidelines that underpinned the assessment are a relatively prescriptive document of approximately 200 pages.
Following desk based reviews, we conducted site visit reviews each year for over 100 providers around Australia. Our reviews encompassed all aspects of their service delivery including policies, systems, staffing, training, quality programs and funding. In some instances, our reviews included visits to clients in their homes, by our reviewers, to evaluate the appropriateness and quality of the services they received. The project required close liaison with state and national DVA offices and the agencies providing services. Comprehensive reports of our reviews of each agency were provided to both the relevant agency and DVA.
Feedback from providers, via a post-assessment survey, indicated that 94% viewed their review and assessment as either excellent (43%) or good (51%). This result is considered to be outstanding for an assessment project of this nature and duration.
Further information on the audit process is available on the
Department Of Veterans' Affairs website.