Chaffey Aged Care’s Experience - Benchmarking & Accreditation

Chaffey Aged Care is a rural not-for-profit residential aged care facility located in Merbein in Victoria and opened its doors in September 2007.  Chaffey provides 71 residential aged care places catering to the needs of permanent, respite and palliative residents as well as 7 beds dedicated to the transition care program (TCP). Chaffey have been participating in the QPS Benchmarking Program since the 1st of April 2014 and Haley Sheriff, Quality and Education Coordinator has taken the time to share Chaffey’s experience with benchmarking and their recent accreditation.

Chaffey Aged Care is located in Merbein, Victoria

1.    What made you contact and join the QPS Benchmarking Program?

Chaffey created a new role that focused on Quality Management and Education, the role was initially tasked with creating a robust and dynamic framework that Chaffey could move forward with quality management. We wanted quality to be meaningful, not just ticking boxes for the sake of accreditation.  It became about effecting change for the greater good of the organisation and our residents, but we realised we needed to have a clear understanding of where we were, before we could decide where we wanted to go. That’s when we discovered QPS.

2.    How did you find your QPS education?

We are a rural facility, so we completed our initial training with QPS via web conferencing. We completed two sessions with the QPS team which we found really helpful, particularly since we had a very short window to complete the first round of data collection. Recently we’ve introduced other key stakeholders within the organisation to QPS. The online resources, in particular the Aged Care AUS Key Performance Indicator Manual have been invaluable tools to assist with educating these new stakeholders on the details of QPS. We definitely recommend everyone new to QPS having this document close at hand, it’s our number one reference!

3.    What do you like about QPS evidenced based data collection tools/scorecards? 

We love that all the audit tools have been developed against the accreditation standards and best practice guidelines specific to the aged care industry.  The tools and the scorecards are easy to understand, and we love that we can drill down into rates of compliance for specific questions. It makes it easier to instigate change when you know that you’re already working with an accurate framework, it takes all the guess work out of it.

4.    How was your first online data entry experience?

Compared with subsequent data submissions, our first submission was a steep learning curve.  The actual process of entering the data couldn’t be easier, but we came on board late in the collection period, which created its own set of challenges.  But we submitted data for every criterion we were subscribed to and we were really proud of that fact.  We’ve come a long way, the biggest thing we’ve learnt about the data submission process is to get it done early, and engage the relevant stakeholders in providing annotation to each criterion. This has made it so much easier to use the information in a meaningful way during our evaluation process.

5.    Using your QPS Benchmarking reports - now seeing trends through ongoing benchmarking;

L-R Dalpat Judith Betty & Keith

a)  Who do you share the results with?

Our results are shared with staff, mostly through graphical representation on our quality communication board. We’ve also shared the results of our satisfaction survey with our residents, representatives and the wider community through our newsletter and outcomes are regularly discussed at our resident consultative meetings.  Our quarterly report is presented to our Board of Management.

b)  What process do you use to action results to drive quality improvement?

We primarily use the information contained in the reports to feed continuous improvement items into our quality management system, and our Master Action Plan (MAP) which is the “Road MAP” for Chaffey Aged Care. The MAP is a collaborative tool operated through Smart Sheet, where we all share our continuous improvement projects and action plans in a way that allows all stakeholders to be involved in the process.

c)  What aspects/features of the reports do you find useful?

Our favourite feature of the report is the benchmarking against other facilities, particularly being able to drill down into the data to ensure we are looking at like facilities in terms of size and location.  This is especially important for us as a rural facility, we aren’t always able to access the same resources as our metro counterparts and it’s really nice to be able to benchmark against facilities facing the same challenges.

6.    Accreditation experience;

a)  Lead up to accreditation?

We implemented QPS into our quality management twelve months out from accreditation, whilst we hadn’t had a lot of opportunity to effect change as a result of the QPS outcomes, we had a really robust method to identify our improvements, and we went into accreditation with lots of forward plans.

b)   Site visit?

The accreditors were really impressed how quickly we had been able to adopt QPS and consolidate our quality management from several systems into one cohesive system that included QPS.  They loved seeing the flow of information, from identifying improvements on the audit tools and scorecards, to completing our own evaluations and creating action plans to implement the changes we wanted to make.

c)  How did the QPS program assist - use of QPS benchmark and trend reports, audits/scorecards etc?

The QPS benchmark and trend reports, audit tools and scorecards, together with our own evaluations of the data were easy to read, and understand and we didn’t have to explain a complicated audit process to the accreditors because QPS isn’t complicated!!

d)  Outcomes?

We achieved 44 out of 44, a massive team effort, something we are all really proud of.  But of course it didn’t finish there, achieving accreditation is really just part of the process, it’s our awesome and very dedicated team that keeps the process going.

7.    Overall experience with QPS Benchmarking

Ralph (RN) & Glad

Everyone has varying opinions about benchmarking, but for us at Chaffey, we have worked hard at integrating it into our day to day business functions so that it’s a meaningful component of our organisation.  But QPS is much more than just benchmarking, it’s a fantastic resource to frame your quality management system around.  The QPS team are really great to deal with, no question is too silly and no request too much.  They are also really receptive to feedback, which means the audit tools are constantly being updated and remain current and practical for use in the real world setting of residential aged care.

There are things we would do differently if we were to have our time over again, like increasing the buy in from stakeholders from the beginning and making the implementation process more inclusive.  We would also build some policy frame work around the criteria chosen, this would have set the parameters from the beginning and helped established what we were trying to achieve.  We are working on these now, hindsight is a wonderful thing and these two points would be our advice to other facilities looking at implementing QPS.

8.    Moving Forward

The next twelve months for Chaffey’s quality management are really exciting; we are taking action on all the improvement projects we’ve identified and we are really starting to spend some time digging further into the outcomes identified through QPS.  We are embracing change and new innovations so it’s very exciting to be working at Chaffey at the moment.

As they say, if it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you!

Haley Sheriff, Coordinator, Quality and Education, Chaffey Aged Care