On behalf of the Department of Health and Ageing, AHA is currently developing a national quality reporting framework and tools for the management of quality assurance across community care programs. The need for a common approach was identified as part of The Way Forward. This appointment demonstrates acknowledged expertise in current developments in quality reporting and assurance within the community care sector. Current work is focused on developing a streamlined approach to quality reporting for HACC, CACP, EACH and NRCP services, and developing a common set of quality standards for these services.
As part of this project, AHA is developing:
- A set of quality reporting standards that may be applied across all community care programs
- A national quality reporting framework
- The means of implementing that framework (along with the necessary tool or tools), so that quality reporting requirements for service providers are streamlined, and duplication is minimised or eliminated.
This project is comprised of two major stages:
- Stage 1: Review and mapping of all quality standards and requirements relevant to community care agencies in Australia
- Stage 2: Development of a Common Quality Reporting Framework – including common standards and requirements to apply to all agencies, and the assessment and monitoring framework to apply across all jurisdictions.
As part of Stage 1, a comprehensive literature review, mapping exercise of community care standards, and the development and distribution for comment of an options paper were completed. AHA is currently completing Stage 2 of the project. AHA has tested and refined the tools developed, and will conduct further pilot testing of the reporting framework and related tools, in a sample of service providers.