The Aged Care Royal Commission has released a new research paper for the second week running as the 26 February deadline for its Final Report approaches – and again the findings are interesting.

The 28-page Research Paper 19 – ‘Does the quality of residential aged care vary with residents’ financial means?’ – looked at statistical data – including StewartBrown data from 2016/17 and 2018/19 – as well as 79 public submissions and information from focus groups.

The focus group participants felt people with higher financial means were able to find a comfortable aged care home more easily – and received a higher quality of services.

But the data confirms what the sector already knows – this is not the case.

Quality of care did not differ depending on whether a resident was supported or not.

There were some small differences.

Residents in facilities with less than 30% supported residents received more allied health and lifestyle care minutes on average than facilities with 50% or more supported residents.

However, the paper notes it is possible this difference is driven by the fees paid by residents for extra services – rather than being evidence that financially disadvantaged residents are receiving lower quality care.

Residents in facilities that charged for additional services also received more care time overall and for most staff types.

Complexity of care – and additional service fees – could explain results

Staff expenditure had similar patterns too but again the paper says these differences might be “partially or fully explained” by the complexity of residents’ care needs, or the additional service fees paid by residents.

The use of physical restraints was higher on average in the facilities with 50% or more supported residents than in those with less than 30%.

Facilities with 50% or more supported residents also had higher hospital or emergency department readmission rates for long-term residents.

Like last week’s paper on hospitalisations among aged care residents, the paper also finds there is room for improvement in the data being collected and published about quality of care.

“Quality indicators for individual residents are not widely available in the current aged care system. Their development would be useful to enable researchers and policy makers to continue research such as this and help ensure all residents receive a high quality of care in the future,” they conclude.

Another point that will surely be raised in the Final Report.