National Healthcare Agreement: PI 30–Elapsed time for aged care services, 2016

Collection and usage attributes

ACAT approval refers to the approval date of the most recent ACAT assessment prior to admission into residential care or commencement of a Home Care Package.

Service type: Residential care; Home Care Package — levels 1–2; Home Care Package — levels 3–4.

Data for residential care only includes permanent residents.

Elapsed time period: within two days or less, seven days or less, less than one month, less than three months, less than nine months.

Analysis of Indigenous status is by self-reported indication on the associated last ACAT assessment record made before entry into aged care.

Disaggregation by state and territory is based on the location of the aged care service.

Disaggregation by remoteness and Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA) is based on the recipient's postcode at time of assessment.

Presented as:

• percentage of people admitted by length of entry period and service type.

100 x (Numerator/Denominator) calculated separately for each service type and elapsed time period.

Number of aged care recipients who first commence a service within elapsed time periods during the financial year.

Total number of aged care recipients who first commence a service during the financial year.

2014–15—State and territory, by service type, by:

• Indigenous status
• remoteness (Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) Remoteness Structure)
• 2011 SEIFA Index of Relative Socio-Economic Disadvantage (IRSD) quintiles

2014–15—Nationally by service type, by 2011 SEIFA IRSD deciles (not reported).

Some disaggregations may result in numbers too small for publication.

Most recent data available for 2016 National Healthcare Agreement performance reporting: 2014–15.

This indicator needs to be interpreted with care. The measure of 'elapsed time' is utilised because the period of time between entry into residential aged care or commencement of a Home Care Package and the ACAT approval may be due to factors which cannot be categorised as 'waiting' time. These include:

• care placement offers that are not accepted
• the availability of alternative community care, informal care and respite services
• variations in care fee regimes that influence client choice of preferred service
• building quality and perceptions about quality of care that influence client choice of preferred service
• obtaining approval for care for use in the future, without intending to accept the care offer in the short term.

From 1 August 2013, the new Home Care Packages Programme commenced, replacing the previous Community Aged Care Packages (CACP), Extended Aged Care at Home (EACH) and Extended Aged Care at Home Dementia (EACHD) packages. Reporting for Home Care Packages are initially by two broad groups of packages — levels 1–2 and levels 3–4 — due to the relatively small numbers of initial recipients of Home Care Package levels 1 and 3.

From 1 July 2014, as part of Commonwealth reforms to the aged care system, the distinction between low care and high care was removed for permanent residential aged care. Therefore, residential care data for 2014–15 will be reported for total residential care only. (Residential care data for previous years was reported disaggregated by low care and high care).

Representational attributes

Accountability attributes

National Healthcare Agreement

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

Specification: Minor work required, the measure needs minor work to meet the intention of the indicator.

Consideration to be given to collect "reason for delayed uptake" where elapsed time is greater than 3 months.

Relational attributes