In February this year, Catholic Healthcare’s Consumer Advisory Body (CAB) members came together online to provide feedback on personal care requirements and experiences to improve our service delivery and care outcomes for our residents and clients.
We delved into the crucial topic of quality of care, beginning with definitions provided by the World Health Organisation and the Australian Government. We collectively identified key attributes that define high-quality care: it should be effective, person-centred, accessible, and transparent, and illustrated these with both positive and negative real-life examples.
Improving our care: new changes in our homes
Complaint management, employee consistency, and mental health support were identified as areas for improvement in residential aged care.
- With these changes in mind, we have introduced an incident register that is currently being enhanced to ensure that incidents and complaints are brought to the attention of people who can resolve them as soon as possible.
- Our new rostering system has allowed our clinical employees flexibility in choosing their shifts, thereby reducing the use of outside agency staff. Pleasingly, employee satisfaction and retention are increasing concurrently across all our homes.
- The Mood Mentors initiative, dedicated to enhancing positive mental health outcomes, has been successfully introduced at McQuoin Park and will soon extend to the St Hedwig community. This initiative trains non-clinical staff employees to recognise symptoms of anxiety and depression and provide support accordingly.
Improving our services: app, call & more
For our clients, we are pleased to share that our key focus for this year is to change our ways of working to ensure our processes align with what you expect from Catholic Healthcare.
Earlier this year, we introduced the Catholic Healthcare App to make information easier to access. This includes helping you keep track of service schedules and advising us of any changes you might have. Over the next year, we will give you access to your care plan and statements and make it easier to book services using the App.
While the App is a great option, we know some people prefer to contact us by telephone. That is why we also plan to review how we manage our customer service teams to improve call wait times and ensure a timelier resolution of your queries.
We acknowledge that recruitment and maintaining consistency in service schedules can be challenging. We are continually working on ways to employ more Catholic Healthcare community workers while improving our recruitment planning.
Looking to share your feedback?
If you are interested in joining the Consumer Advisory Body and sharing your thoughts on your care with Catholic Healthcare’s leadership, please look out for more information on becoming a member later in the year.