26
October
2017
|
16:13
Australia/Melbourne

Bupa's Response to the Carnell Inquiry

Bupa welcomes the release of the Review of National Aged Care Quality Regulatory Processes  to enhance care quality and protect older Australians.

 

Bupa welcomes the release of the Review of National Aged Care Quality Regulatory Processes ('the Carnell Inquiry') and broadly supports all 10 recommendations to enhance care quality and protect older Australians. This includes the establishment of an independent Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission to centralise accreditation, compliance and complaints handling.

Unannounced visits, particularly to aged care homes deemed to be at high-risk of non-compliance, are an important element in ensuring compliance. We will seek close consultation with the sector to work through the detail of unannounced accreditation audits and understand how it might work to ensure it doesn’t create unnecessary administrative burden or have any adverse impact on resident care.

We support the proposed increased data collection and more involved reporting, as it would provide greater transparency and accountability, more helpful information for customers, and encourage provider competition.

Bupa has a robust serious incident response system and believe that it should be a requirement for all providers to demonstrate they have, and adhere to, robust governance arrangements in place to appropriately deal with serious incidents.

If the Review’s recommendations are accepted by the Government it will be important to ensure in their implementation that the focus of regulation remains on outcomes, rather than inputs, and does not create unnecessary administrative burden that redirects resources away from care to our residents.