DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND AGEING, SYSTEM FOR THE PAYMENT OF AGED RESIDENTIAL CARE

INTRODUCTION

1 Data on the number of persons in aged residential care in NSW is sourced via the Department of Health and Ageing, System for the Payment of Aged Residential Care. The System for the Payment of Aged Residential Care (SPARC) is an administrative collection managed by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing. It contains details of the payments to providers of residential care in Australia.

2 The data are primarily used by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing (DoHA) and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).

3 This collection contains information on residents, their classification scale, admission and separation dates.

4 In this product, data are presented on the number of persons in aged residential care for each Local Government Area (LGA) in NSW. Data has been sourced form DoHA.

SCOPE

5 The scope of the collection is all persons who:

• were living in a nursing home or hostel (now referred to collectively as "residential care") at 1 October 1997 or who have since been admitted to residential care;
• have applied for admittance to residential care and at 1 October 1997 had a valid Aged Care Assessment Team (ACAT) assessment; or
• have previously been living in residential care and have since 'separated', i.e. have left residential care.

6 People in residential care include both permanent and respite admissions.

REFERENCE PERIOD

7 The data in this product relate to people in residential aged care as at 30 June 2006.

KEY DATA ITEMS

8 The following key data items were used in this product:

9 Care recipients: A person assessed as having significant care needs which can be appropriately met through the provision of residential care, community care and/or flexible care.

10 Resident: A resident is a person who has been assessed as requiring residential care and who resides in a Commonwealth-funded aged care service.

11 Residential care: Personal and/or nursing care that is provided to a person in a residential care service. The person is also provided with accommodation that includes appropriate staffing, meals, cleaning services, furnishings, furniture and equipment for the provision of that care and accommodation.

GEOGRAPHY

12 Data are geocoded to Statistical Local Area (SLA) based on the location of the service (not of the service recipient). In this product, SLAs are aggregated to LGAs. The 2006 edition of the Australian Standard Geographical Classification (ASGC) (cat. No. 1216.0) was used in the coding.

COLLECTION METHODOLOGY

13 Where a person is assessed and it is recommended that the person be admitted to a residential aged care facility, a delegate of the assessing team will complete an Aged Care Application and Approval Form (Form 2624) in consultation with the applicant. The form is signed by either the applicant or someone on behalf of the applicant.

14 Details from this form are entered into the SPARC system by DoHA staff. Data are then transferred to DoHA's data warehouse, the Aged Care and Community Care Management Information System (ACCMIS), from which statistical extracts are taken.

15 Data from ACCMIS are provided to AIHW who produce a national publication on residential aged care.

ACCURACY

16 The ACCMIS data warehouse is periodically 'refreshed' and some existing data are revised when this occurs. As such, two extractions of data for the same period of time could have some differences due to revisions in between the dates of extraction.

17 Care should be exercised in the interpretation of these tables as residents may not necessarily have been living in the same LGA prior to their admission to residential care.

18 As data in this collection are obtained from an administrative system, DoHA's payment system to residential aged care facilities, they are not subject to sampling variability. However other inaccuracies, collectively referred to as non-sampling error, may affect the data. These non-sampling errors may arise from a number of sources, including:

• errors in data reporting by respondents;
• errors in capturing or processing data;
• estimating missing or misreported data; and
• definition and classification errors.

COLLECTION HISTORY

19 Residential aged care was restructured in 1997-98 and a single system for the collection of information, SPARC, was introduced.

PUBLISHED DATA

20 The AIHW publication Residential aged care in Australia, 2003-04 (AIHW cat. No. AGE 43) is available from the AIHW website, as is a working paper entitled Client characteristics metadata in residential aged care.

RELATED WEB SITES

21 Further information can be found at the Department of Health and Ageing web site: www.health.gov.au.

22 Further information can be found at the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare web site: www.aihw.gov.au.