On behalf of the Department of Health and Ageing, AHA was engaged to develop 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 AHA’s acknowledged expertise in current developments in quality reporting and assurance within the community care sector.
Our work 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.
Currently reporting requirements for these services vary across states and territories and programs. Service providers report against various standards to different bodies which results in overlap and duplication. A key aim of streamlining quality reporting in the community care sector is to reduce administrative requirements through the development of common standards and reporting processes.
Our work occurred in two 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.
Stage 1 included a comprehensive literature review, mapping exercise of community care standards, and the development and distribution for comment of an options paper.
Stage 2 included development, testing and refinement of the standards and tools developed, leading to completion of:
- 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.
Our work provided the basis for the Community Care Common Standards, which are currently being more broadly pilot tested at services across Australia.
A copy of the report can be downloaded at the
Department of Health and Ageing website.