Aged care services and providers around Australia will soon be set up to compare their quality of care, following the announcement of $3 million in Federal government funding, awarded to the Australian Consortium for Aged Care (ACAC), to implement the Quality Measurement Toolbox (QMET) nationwide.

The funding is drawn from the $20 billion Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) and has been allocated in response to recommendations from the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety.

Led by SAHMRI’s Registry of Senior Australians (ROSA) Director Professor Maria Inacio, the three-year project will establish the ACAC-QMET Coordinating Centre, forging the infrastructure necessary to ensure the effective implementation of QMET.

“The centre’s primary focus will be evaluating quality and safety of care for older people accessing services across a range of key settings, including primary care, dementia care and palliative care and others,” Prof Inacio said.

“We’ll construct a national framework and develop innovative measurement and reporting methods to address critical gaps in the system.”

Quality measurement has been identified as fundamental to ensuring the accountability and transparency among aged care services and providers that is central to overall improvement.

The centre will establish a baseline assessment of the status of aged care quality nationally and will ultimately serve to regulate the industry in accordance with future policy developments.

“It’s clear that providing consistent, high-quality care for the 1.5 million Australians accessing the aged care sector has been a challenge historically and the ACAC is well placed to deliver a long overdue quality measurement framework that reflects Australia’s values,” Prof Inacio said.

The ACAC was established following the Royal Commission, as the vehicle to drive necessary changes in the sector.

The consortium has enlisted government and sector representatives to form an expert advisory panel that will provide guidance throughout each phase of the project.

ACAC members include ROSA, the University of South Australia, the Centre for Health Systems and Safety Research, Australian Institute of Health Innovation at Macquarie University, the Centre for Health Services Research at Queensland University, Queensland University of Technology, Flinders University, the Australian Dementia Network Registry, the Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing at the University of New South Wales and the Australian Government Department of Health (Star Ratings Section). Svelte Studios will be the technology partner responsible for development of the ACAC-QMET platform.

The centre is expected to be fully operational in 2023, with the first components of the ACAC-QMET to be made available to the public by 2025.