ACAA 29th Annual Congress

The ACAA 29th Annual Congress in Adelaide welcomed both QPS Benchmarking and iCare to share the exciting project that has begun between the two organisations.

Breaking down the information silos in aged care has come a long way since the introduction of electronic systems to manage a resident's clinical, care and medication information.

Software vendors now need to take it a step further and work together to make health information flow between their electronic systems to eliminate the frustration of information in silos and the double and triple handling of information.

iCare and QPS Benchmarking have partnered and begun this process. We have identified a way to streamline the workflow in aged care, creating enhanced efficiencies. The partnership provides the aged care industry with an intelligent, all in one system that offers care planning software with benchmarking and performance information, with no additional effort required.

Silvia Holcroft

The objectives are:

1. Provide a simpler method to communicate and transfer health information
2. Capture the residents healthcare information required for benchmarking in iCare's Assessment Forms
3. Information capture readily transferred for QPS Benchmarking purposes
4. By capturing this information at the point of care, data entry duplication and thus the risk of data collection and reporting errors is significantly reduced

The success of such partnerships is based around the solution being customer driven, that is, there is a customer need being fulfilled and there is value that the customer can ascribe to such a solution that will make it commercially viable for the IT vendors.

IT vendors must then work together in an open and transparent way to support the customer's needs. The technology is available to share information, however it comes down to the willingness of the systems providers to work together and look for a sustainable commercial model.

iCare and QPS Benchmarking have been conducting a beta program with a joint customer - Anglicare NSW - Chesalon Living. Their Education and Quality Manager, Mary McConochie had this to say about the partnership,

"Ensuring Accreditation Standards are met is critical in any aged care facility. iCare's Clinical and Care Solution has allowed us to capture resident information in a format that is useable to assess the effectiveness of our quality management system using QPS Benchmarking. QPS Benchmarking highlights areas that need improvement so that we can monitor and where necessary improve standards of care to provide better health outcomes for residents."

Chris Gray

iPad Winner - Glenn Piper from James Milson Village

Glenn Piper from James Milson Village in Sydney accepts an Apple iPad at this year's ACAA 29th Annual Congress in Adelaide from QPS General Manager Adam Holcroft.

James Milson village has been benchmarking with QPS since 2002 and in the early days of benchmarking set the standard for Occupational Health and Safety outcomes and participated in last year's review of the QPS Residential Satisfaction survey tool.