The first in a series of insight reports into the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission’s Serious Incident Response Scheme (SIRS) has found aged care residential providers working hard to implement and fine-tune their approaches to incident management.
Commissioner for Aged Care Quality and Safety, Janet Anderson said that in the first six weeks of the Scheme the Commission received 1,876 notifications which fell into the Priority One reportable incident category, an incident in a residential aged care service that caused, or could have caused, physical or psychological injury to a consumer requiring medical or psychological treatment.
“The most common type of reported incident was unreasonable use of force, followed by neglect,” Ms Anderson said.
“The notifications received to date indicate that providers are responding actively and swiftly to their new reporting obligations under SIRS,” she said.
Ms Anderson said a key part of SIRS was the requirement for providers to have an effective incident management system to reduce injuries and other incidents, and to respond appropriately to incidents when they occurred.
“An aged care organisation which has an effective incident management system is well-positioned to collect and use incident data to build a learning culture, helping staff to prevent similar incidents from occurring and to better protect the health, safety and wellbeing of aged care consumers,” she said.
She said the Commission’s SIRS insight reports would reflect back to the sector relevant data and information drawn from notifications and the regulatory treatment of those notifications.
Ms Anderson said information from incident notifications informed the Commission’s broader regulatory actions and indicated areas where it could clarify and build on its initial SIRS guidance.
The Commission’s eight-page SIRS Insight Report can be accessed at this PS News link.
