Consumer Experience Reports in home and community care

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission is working on expanding the use of Consumer Experience Reports (CER) into the home and community aged care sector. These reports are aimed at promoting consumer choice by capturing the consumer experience of the quality of care and services in aged care.

Developing the reports

CERs are developed from the results of interviews. To ensure outcomes of the reports for Home Care are fit for purpose, the Commission has evaluated and learnt from our experience implementing consumer experience reports for residential aged care. Lessons learnt include the value of pilot testing with the most diverse range of consumers possible, and the benefits of reviewing and periodically revising questions to reflect ongoing feedback.

For information on the reports we currently publish for residential aged care services please see our Consumer Experience Reports in residential aged care services pages. 

Developing new questions

CERs are developed from the results of interviews with consumers of aged care services using a standardised set of questions designed to capture consumers’ experiences. The draft questions for the CERs for Home Care have been developed from the results of a review of research literature in the field of consumer choice and quality.  They are also linked to the new Aged Care Quality Standards.

Literature Review

The literature review to help develop the questions was undertaken by the Australian Institute for Primary Care and Ageing (AIPCA) at La Trobe University.

The resulting report AACQA Literature Review: Choice and quality in community care (March 2018) identified eight themes relating to choice and quality that are important to consumers making decisions about home- and community-based care:

• Control
• Local residence
• Interpersonal interaction
• Flexibility
• Affordability
• Administrative and financial literacy
• Safety
• Timeliness of service provision. 

Pilot testing

We commenced pilot testing of the draft questions in November 2018. The pilot testing will evaluate the validity, comprehensibility and test-retest reliability of the questions. This phase will help us determine the most effective method (or mixture of methods) for capturing consumers’ experiences. 

During this phase we will engage a representative group of approved providers in testing a set of interview questions. A number of approved providers have volunteered to participate in this pilot phase. 

We will also be pilot testing methodologies for seeking responses from consumers - including telephone interviews, paper and online surveys. The process will pay particular attention to ethics and privacy principles.

While consumer participation in the pilot will be voluntary, we aim to include a broad sample of respondents to ensure the representation of consumers from culturally diverse backgrounds and those living in metropolitan, rural and remote locations.

For updates on the development of CERs in home and community aged care, please subscribe to our newsletter.

For background information on CERs see the Commission’s Consumer Experience Report web pages.