Immunisation;

Whilst health care  facility's have been provided with copies of the Australian  Immunisation Handbook and receive updates regularly, it is useful to  remember the Department of Health & Aging Website on  Immunisation . If you need to access information quickly it is easy to navigate and contains lots of great information  including fact sheets for  consumers and  detailed  information  for health care workers. A recent update which may be of interest is about  the rotavirus vaccines used in Australia, Rotarix® and RotaTeq®, and a small risk of increased intussusception. Read the information located at  Rotavirus immunisation update . 

Complaints about the Accreditation Agency and the role of the Aged Care Commissioner

There has been increasing interest and discussion by some managers regarding the role of the Aged Care Commissioner and the Accreditation Agency, particularly in relation to the investigation of complaints. There is an interesting document titled Protocol between the Office of the Aged Care Commissioner and the Aged Care Standards and Accreditation Agency which is worth a read.

According to the document on the accreditation agency website, ‘ The Commissioner may examine complaints made about the conduct of accreditation bodies relating to the Accreditation Grant Principles 1999 or the conduct of persons carrying out audits, or making support contacts under those Principles. Division 6.2 of the Investigation Principles 2007 discusses complaints to the Aged Care Commissioner and the Commissioner’s discretion to examine complaints.

The document also reminds us that the core functions of the Agency are to:

• Manage the residential aged care accreditation process using the Accreditation Standards

• Promote high quality care and assist industry to improve service quality by identifying best practice, and providing information, education and training

• Assess and strategically manage services working towards accreditation

• Liaise with the Department of Health and Ageing about services that do not comply with the relevant Standards.

The document can be found at

http://www.accreditation.org.au/assessors/assessor-handbooks-and-resources/

Recent feedback from some managers has highlighted the importance of seeking clarification from Assessors if they make what appear to be strong recommendations during general discussion. For managers recently, upon seeking clarity, it was determined that the assessors were passing personal views, rather than making recommendations or providing additional information in reports. Non clarity of the content of the discussion would have resulted in managers assuming they had to make specific changes to internal processes, which for their facilities are working well and meet regulatory standards and guidelines.