South Australian research could improve aged care

A new South Australian project, which will investigate the preferences of older people and their family carers in terms of quality of life and cost effectiveness of aged care, will “empower” the elderly to have a say in what services they want and need.

The major project, led by Flinders University researchers, will develop a health economic model through the investigation of Consumer Directed Care (CDC), which is being conducted in collaboration with the Aged Care and Housing Group, Catholic Community Services, Hammond Care and Helping Hand Aged Care.

The Australian government is funding Consumer Directed Care (CDC) in its community aged care programs.

Under the initiative, the government will fund selected community aged care providers to deliver innovative service models, which will provide care recipients and their carers with greater control over the design and delivery of the care and services they receive.

Associate Professor, Julie Ratcliffe, told DPSeNews the three-year project would aim to determine the attitudes and preferences of older people, their informal carers and staff engaged in the provision of aged care within Australia for a CDC approach to community aged care service delivery.

“The project will assess the extent to which attitudes and preferences change over time as a consequence of exposure to CDC,” Professor Ratcliffe said.

She said it would also investigate “incremental changes in health, quality of life and psychological well-being for older people and their informal carers as a consequence of exposure to CDC, and determine the cost effectiveness of the new CDC approach to community aged care service delivery”.

A mixed methods approach comprising qualitative interviews and a discrete choice experiment (DCE) will be applied to determine the attitudes and preferences of older people, their informal carers and staff engaged in the provision of community aged care for CDC.

A DCE is a quantitative methodology that can be applied to determining individual’s preferences in relation to the features or characteristics of a service that are most highly valued.

The results of the qualitative interviews and the DCE will inform the introduction of a new CDC approach. The extent of change over time in the psychological well-being of older people and their informal carers as a consequence of exposure to CDC will be measured.

“The proposed framework will have wide applicability in the future development and economic evaluation of new innovations across the aged care sector,” Professor Ratcliffe said.