Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services) Share this | Hansard source

There are two elements to that, and they come to the two elements which we've discussed before. I think the other point I should make is in reference to where we sit in the overall scheme of things with respect to the royal commission and where we go out of the back of that.

Clearly, the requirements for reporting—the requirements which I indicated before for falls in both categories under the mandatory quality indicator program and also under the serious response scheme—are going to require providers to assess the fall and the reasons for the fall. Quite frankly, a good quality system has a continuous improvement element as part of it. So that's one of the objectives of the Serious Incident Response Scheme—the assessment of the fall, the reasons for it and then the corrective actions that are put in place to deal with that. That would be my expectation of what would occur.

With respect to the data: I would agree with you with respect to the amount of data that is available and that exists in the aged-care sector right now. That's something that we clearly need to improve. That will be part of the work that we do post the receipt of the royal commission report in just three weeks time. It is clearly something that we need to do to improve the visibility of this information, not only for consumers and for the community but also for the department and for the quality regulator. This is clearly a direction that we will continue to move in and it is certainly part of our policy discussions at this point in time.

So the operation of a good quality system will do exactly what you've asked it to do because continuous improvement is one of the elements of a good quality system.