Government Approach to Aged Care Quality Initiative Disappointing

Today’s decision by the Associate Minister of Health forcing aged-care providers to implement the InterRAI quality initiative by 2014 is very disappointing, says the New Zealand Aged Care Association.

“Many aged care providers around the country are extremely supportive of the InterRAI quality initiative and want it implemented as soon as practicable,” Mr Martin Taylor, the Chief Executive of the NZACA, said today. “It is therefore disappointing that something so positive has now become a regulatory compliance burden as a result of being made mandatory and having the time allocated to roll out this initiative shortened substantially.”

InterRAI is a standardised assessment tool for the elderly in aged residential care. It will contribute to and help support more uniform care planning and the sharing of electronic patient records, which will contribute to improved experiences as the elderly move through the health system.

The initiative will also provide for the first time in New Zealand detailed objective statistical information about the elderly in care and in the community and this data will support better policy development and implementation.

Mr Taylor said that the roll out of the initiative was originally over four years, to be completed in July 2015, and was voluntary. However, today’s decision by the Minister of Health has made the initiative mandatory and shortened the roll out time by one year.

Mr Taylor said the aged-care industry needed to train around 2000 nurses to meet the requirements, but to date only around 100 nurses have completed training. “This effectively means that industry will need to train 1900 nurses over 20 months instead of 32 months and this is a big task.”

He added that the initiative was being funded by Government on a shoe-strong budget when compared with the funding provided to DHBs to roll out this initiative. “When DHBs rolled out this initiative, they trained only about 700 Registered Nurses on a budget of $12.5 million over four years. In comparison we are being expected to train almost three times that number for $10.8 million dollars, and complete that training in less time.”

“NZACA is committed to making this quality initiative a success for all elderly New Zealanders and to ensure this is achieved the project needs to be funded appropriately and have time frames driven by pragmatism.”

ENDS

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