Resources

Access important websites relating to safety, quality and regulatory standards.

The AICG community can easily access important websites relative to safety, quality and regulatory healthcare standards. Browse our carefully curated list of websites below. 

Older adults report Quality of Life (QoL) as a central goal for aged care, with 93% of Australians agreeing that it should be mandatory for providers to publicly report on QoL measures. Quality of life is also considered by older Australians as a valuable indicator for comparing aged care services. But it’s still not routinely measured and reported in clinical governance datasets.

It has been reported that complaints relating to registered health practitioners increased over the 2021/2022 financial year. Further (and separately), in aged care, there was a total of 2,767 complaints made in the first quarter of 2022 and 2,642 complaints in the second quarter. Both these figures had also trended upwards compared with the corresponding numbers in 2021 (with 2,313 in the first quarter of 2021 and 2,261 in the second quarter).

Variations in the way care is accessed or delivered, and in clinical outcomes, can be highly informative. It may be that such variations are warranted or expected (for example, the surge in telehealth at the outset of the pandemic, or in the number of infection-related deaths) or may reflect person-centredness and individual choice. However sometimes variations may be ‘unwarranted’ and unveil weaknesses in the quality of care, or worse still, herald the risk of harm.

All human service sectors experience turning points. The 1990s was a decade of revelation about poor healthcare quality, identified and reported in major studies of adverse events and public inquiries across the world. The initial shock waves evolved into a care safety revolution, supported by the introduction of clinical governance. A quarter of a century later, the outcomes of the Aged Care Quality and Safety Royal Commission is having a similar impact in aged care, with a stream of legislation and innovations challenging aged care providers to re-set their approach to creating and maintaining quality care.

In this webinar, Cathy Balding will talk us through four clinical governance rabbit holes that have been observed in healthcare and how avoiding them can accelerate aged care clinical governance effectiveness.

Simulation in healthcare has traditionally been applied in the context of education and training. Whilst robust education and training (which may be achieved through simulation) will ultimately improve safety and quality, simulation can also be used much more broadly - and directly - as a tool in enhancing safety and quality in care delivery.

As the wave of reforms continues within aged care, we stop to take a closer look at ‘Quality’ within aged care. What does it take to achieve quality aged care, and what really is the quality manager’s role in quality care?

Documentation is an essential component of effective communication. Given the complexity of healthcare and the fluidity of clinical teams, healthcare records are one of the most important information sources available to clinicians. Undocumented or poorly documented information relies on memory and is less likely to be communicated and retained. This can lead to loss of information, which can result in misdiagnosis and harm.

(Australian Commission on Safety and Quality and Safety in Health Care)

Effective governance at board level means knowing what you need to know, and clearly communicating this.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to cast a shadow over the health of the world, we continue to learn about clinical governance at scale. We have previously drawn analogies to Australian government responses with clinical governance principles - however the parallels don’t stop there.  Across the world, the economic impact of the pandemic has been palpable and is illustrative of the co-dependent relationship between health and money, where better health outcomes are known to correlate with better economic outcomes.