EHR or paper records, met or did not meet the accreditation outcomes, and whether they met or did not meet the accreditation Outcome 1.8 Information Systems
The study findings indicate that the overall contribution of EHR to meeting aged care accreditation standards in Australia was very small. Only 9 (0.3%) RAC homes failed the information system outcome. This may cause stagnation in the adoption of EHR by the rest 62.6% of RAC homes that were still using paper records by the end of 2013. The further adoption of EHR in Australian RAC sector needs to be continuously followed. However, none of the RAC homes that used EHR for information management failed to meet that outcome. Also, the proportion of RAC homes using EHR that met all accreditation standards was significantly higher than that of homes with paper records.
The aged care accreditation system in france phone number list Australia is established to ensure an RAC service meets the minimum safety standard mandated by the Aged Care Act. It is not a quality ranking system, such as a star ranking system for e-Bay, which is available to the general public, thus providing the pressure and incentive for the aged care service providers to improve services. This explains why only 0.3% of RAC homes in this study failed the standard. Therefore, there is a lack of policy incentive for RAC homes in Australia to further improve quality once the minimum safety standard audited by the aged care accreditation system is met. This may cause inertia in the whole sector and stagnation in innovation, which needs to be further confirmed and studied.
Nevertheless the strength of this study is that it had the advantage of a nationwide overview of the performance of Australian RAC homes in information management and the possible contribution of EHR to this process. We believe it provides some indication of the benefits from EHR in RAC, consistent with those found in previous studies using other methods.