5 key drivers that will impact the future of aged care

Workplace culture has always influenced the enthusiasm and care with which services are delivered. If your culture fosters low morale, dissatisfaction, high turnover, or even bullying, this will be reflected in staff interactions with consumers. In other words, low morale = poor consumer experience. Poor experience equates to low occupancy and/or market share – two key metrics that your organisation must track and seek to increase.

Unfortunately, the Royal Commission declared that workforce is currently a ‘chronic issue’ for the sector, so something needs to be done. As an employer, your organisation must have a compelling workforce value proposition; that is, consider how you will attract good staff to your team. Management burnout is sweeping the sector because of external factors and rising ‘compliance’ demand, affecting morale and capacity. As a starting point, aged care providers should consider the following ideas:

• Now more than ever, it will be crucial to implement measures that cultivate a positive workplace culture. A good starting point is to conduct anonymised staff surveys, but ensure you see them through: transparent reporting of results and next steps is key to this.
• Learning and development planning will be a necessary mechanism to remain compliant with regulations, policies, and sector reforms; staff must be suitable for the nature of aged care work, and capable of providing safe, quality services.
• Consider measures for remote working, given the need for aged care in remote areas and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Plus – what will happen within your organisation if COVID-19 travel restrictions are reinstated?
• Rethink your approach to safety and wellbeing: can you staff access an employee assistance program? Can you explain the trends in data about your staff turnover? Do you understand the implications of the lost time injury frequency rate within your organisation?
• Lastly, enterprise agreements can go a long way towards creating happier, staff that feel more secure and cared for. Consider implementing a new agreement or updating your existing one.

To stay competitive, organisations will need to undertake extensive consumer experience work. Here, providers will need to consider everything that customers encounter during their interactions and exchanges with your organisation: food and nutrition, lifestyle, and hospitality – and all elements of communication.

With the aged care sector’s focus on choice and control, there’s never been a better time to deep-dive into everything from service design to delivery to understand the experience you consumers are having with you. Consider also how you can further enable consumers to provide feedback and speak up if something isn’t right. Remember, organisations who do not empower their consumers to exercise choice and control will receive no mercy in the public domain.

Building a reputation as a consumer-focused provider that people trust will facilitate increased occupancy and market share, improving the sustainability outcomes of your organisation through enhanced financial performance.

Clinical care is health care that encompasses the Prevention, Treatment and Management of illness or injury as well as the maintenance of psychosocial, mental, and physical wellbeing; it should aim to prevent deterioration of health and enhance quality of life.

A clinical governance framework is mandatory – this articulates how an organisation intends to ensure high quality and safe care. More than that, your governance approach must address the needs, goals, and preferences of consumers.

That said, governance must have a transparent culture. It’s not enough for a board to accept data at face value, it must be interrogated to determine its validity – an effective and reliable ‘Assurance Mechanism’ is critical otherwise mismanagement and misconduct can slip through the cracks with poor accountability. To facilitate this assessment, ask:

• How do we as a board know that our organisation’s care is safe and effective?
• How do we know we have a safety culture?
• How do we know our care is consumer/person-centred?
• How do we know our people are capable?
• How do we know we are measuring, monitoring, and reporting on key clinical risks?

Complementing governance is quality. All aged care providers must comply with the Aged Care Quality Standards. One way to ensure compliance with this framework is effective clinical governance that will support the achievement of good clinical outcomes for consumers. So, it really is in an organisation’s best interest to rethink their approach to governance.

Additionally, providers should ensure they are engaging in a robust continuous improvement initiative. It should be an ongoing, objective process that evaluates how well an organisation works, and identifies ways to improve its processes. As a general rule, the principles of quality management are:

• Customer focus – keep the customer at the fore of everything you do
• Leadership – ensure leaders are appropriately skilled and on the same page about organisational vision
• Engagement of people – involve stakeholders, staff, and customers in decision making and service design
• Process approach – use the Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) tool (or similar) when investigating quality
• Improvement – proactively (and reactively) seek opportunities to enhance elements of your business or services
• Evidence-based design – use data to make informed decisions when exploring new opportunities
• Relationship management – regularly supporting and liaising with stakeholders and suppliers can maintain solid relationships and keep them accountable (don’t forget, they can be a part of the consumer experience).

To be sustainable, organisations need to explore growth and diversification opportunities. As a starting point, consider how your services can fit into the continuum of care: the idea that a single provider can deliver a comprehensive plan of care that adjusts to the needs of the consumer over a period of time. It encompasses a variety of levels and aims to reduce the number of times an ageing individual moves around to different providers as their needs change. How much do you provide? What existing resources and capabilities could you leverage to capture more of the continuum?

How can an organisation ensure its impact is ethical, positive, and responsible? Through governance (yes, more governance), environment, and sustainability policies. Here are some points:

• Good governance will support the engagement of external and independent clinical audits and reviews of practice, with full transparency. In addition, a strong code of ethics needs to guide operations and service provision.
• To combat margin compression through a reduction in overheads and become more eco-friendly, organisations will need to explore renewable energy and invest in more efficient plant and equipment.
• Consider implementing pandemic leave provisions if COVID-19 flares up again; this may necessitate a greater reliance and focus on cash reserves.
• Prevent the exploitation of vulnerable workers (i.e. modern slavery) through ethical recruitment practices.
• Foster greater representation across a workforce – with regard to gender and ethnic diversity – which will ensure consumers can access culturally appropriate care. With growing ethnic diversity in our ageing population, a competitive organisation will have the capacity to cater to these consumers.