Aged care duplication causes frustration
A CSIRO report examines how the aged care and health systems are failing to talk to each other – putting barriers to your care.
You probably won’t be surprised to learn that care and health providers in the aged care sector fail to share information across siloed services and data points.
Anyone who has had to complete government and other bureaucratic requirements has known this for ages.
The number of times you must repeat listing the same information for various services is frustrating to the point of annoyance.
Still, it’s nice to have our experiences confirmed by the CSIRO. Apparently, it’s all because of the disconnection and “inoperability” of the technology and platforms that are not connected and don’t talk to each other.
Following the Aged Care Royal Commission’s criticism of the sector’s communications, the science agency worked with the Digital Health CRC to assess how the sector is better using communications technology, affecting thousands of providers and around 500,000 residential and home care consumers.
The royal commission concluded that collection, use, and consideration of data, was not being optimised to benefit those accessing, providing, and delivering aged care services.
In simple terms, the CSIRO report found not much has changed – the public is still challenged by inconsistent data and communications, unconnected agencies and software, and poor access to information.
Technology has enabled a lot of ageing and aged care data to be collected but there are too many barriers to it being shared by health and care providers who need it.
The report found many examples of manually entered data that was then doubled up or could not be accessed.
For example, GPs had to prescribe medications for aged care residents through that site’s electronic system but also had to manually re-enter the same information about the patient in their own clinic’s system.
Pharmacies also faced barriers, with some medicines only able to be prescribed by paper, not electronically, while care recipients needed to share details of their care repeatedly because of poor data exchange between their services.
Difficulties accessing data was also a problem for GPs and allied health professionals when providing care, according to interviews conducted by the researchers.
Providers of residential aged care and in-home aged care had problems accessing critical data about a care recipient from My Aged Care and My Health Record.
“If everyone involved in providing and receiving care has access to the same, up-to-date data, everyone is on the same page, and older Australians can receive high-quality care,” CSIRO research head, Dr David Hansen, said.
Some providers and agencies also confronted barriers to sharing by having to rely on non-digital communication technologies such as fax and post.
Dr Hansen said the healthcare industry “has faced, and begun to solve, many of the same problems that the aged care sector now faces as it integrates new digital technologies”.
Recommendations focus on introducing information-exchange standards, better technology and accessibility that allows for information (data) to be shared between the parties that need it, ranging from aged care providers to doctors, pharmacies, and government websites.
Other recommendations include:
Improved integration of communications technology across aged care and health care
Data collected on aged care should be kept and analysed to improve service quality
Education and support for aged care users and providers that emphasises the importance of proper data collection, so they can better collect, analyse, and exchange data to reduce workload
Integrated communications sharing between the aged care and health sectors.
“In the report we look to lessons learned in the healthcare sector. The knowledge can be applied to data exchange both within the aged care sector and between the two sectors,” Dr Hansen said.
Download The Australian aged care data landscape: Gaps, opportunities and future directions report.
Related reading: Innovation Aus
