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Collecting feedback from residents and clients is one of the most important aspects of improving the quality of aged care services. However, with staff already stretched to their limits performing vital caring duties, and few organisations having an overarching strategy for quality assessment, quality checks can become more and more infrequent.
The truth is that gathering infrequent feedback could actually be doing more harm than good. Despite good intentions, you could actually be attracting more negative feedback – impacting your consumers’ satisfaction levels and your organisation’s reputation.
In aged care, perhaps more than in other industries, frequency of feedback counts
Although any quality measurement is better than none, one-off, passive or ad-hoc feedback mechanisms rarely give you an accurate picture of the care experience. In fact, by taking a passive approach to feedback, you may be soliciting more negative feedback without realising it.
Given our natural tendency to focus on negative experiences, people are more likely to voice concerns rather than highlight instances of stand-out service. This could mean you’re only capturing the negatives (and missing out on positive feedback).
However, with a proactive and timely approach, people are more likely to provide a balanced view of their experience. When they know you’re going to ask for feedback again within a certain time period, they’re more likely to give you a snapshot of their experience at that moment. Whereas if they haven’t been asked for feedback for a long period of time, they may rehash old problems that management is aware of and are working towards improving.
If you’re using a human-centred approach like phone calls, even if someone starts with negatives, you can often draw out positives with well-placed follow-up questions.
Complaints and gripes are minimised as people feel heard and validated – reassured that their feedback has been taken on board rather than venting to other residents, family members or prospective consumers.
Achieving compliance: the need for regular and proactive feedback
The Australian Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety highlighted the importance of hearing from consumers. Perhaps more significantly, they stressed the importance of ongoing, regular input.
“Any new governance standard should require approved providers to allocate resources and implement mechanisms to support regular feedback from, and engagement with, people receiving aged care, their families, their advocates, and staff.”
It also highlights the ongoing nature of feedback in Standard 6:
“The organisation regularly seeks input and feedback from consumers, carers, the workforce and others and users the input and feedback to inform continuous improvements for individual consumers and the whole organisation.”
For many aged care providers, compliance with these recommendations feels like a time-consuming burden. It can feel as if they’re asking for a lot – especially when your people are busy caring for your residents and clients. That’s why implementing a systematic, organisation-wide system for gathering feedback is crucial – saving you time and freeing up your people to focus on their caring duties.
Benefits of continuous measurement
Identify potential issues sooner
By gathering feedback incrementally, management has time to act on issues sooner and there is less risk of small irritations turning into full-blown complaints.
Improvements are easier to implement
Making small changes and then testing whether these are working is much easier than making large organisation-wide transformations. E.g. If you’ve made changes to the food and you hear that people aren’t enjoying it, you can jump in and make small changes, rather than waiting for a slew of complaints, forcing you to change the menu completely.
Gives you a chance to measure progress
Measuring regularly gives you an indication of whether your efforts are paying off. This can help inform your future direction, and it can also give your staff a morale boost by showing them that their efforts are making a difference.
Shows that you care
Regularly checking in with residents and clients can go a long way to showing that you care. Even if there are ongoing issues, a simple phone call to tell people that you’ve heard them and updating them on changes you’re making will go a long way to improving satisfaction and limiting complaints.
Improved business performance
Being proactive in gathering feedback is not just about improvements or compliance— it makes business sense as well. Studies have found consumers are willing to pay up to 10% more in almost every industry if they know they’ll receive excellent service.
How often is too often?
There’s a fine balance between annoying people with frequent check-ins and leaving them in the dark. We advise making contact once every four months. This gives you enough time to implement changes and gives people a chance to feel the difference your initiatives are making. And it’s frequent enough that people know you value their feedback and have their best interests at heart.
With that said, there is one caveat: there’s no such thing as too much contact if you’re calling with useful information. People will always welcome a quick call or email to let them know an important piece of information.
There are many different ways to gather consumer feedback, including comment boxes, email surveys and person-to-person communications. We recommend phone calls as they provide the most consistent results and allow you to set the cadence for feedback (rather than waiting for someone to fill in a complaint form).
If you opt for phone calls as your check-in method, it can also double as a social connection call—another instance where there is never too much contact when it comes to aged care.
Fostering a culture of continuous improvement
If you’re committed to making your feedback processes more consistent, it’s critical you get staff involved. Foster a culture that values feedback and improvement. Make sure all staff members understand the benefits of continuous monitoring for both consumers and themselves.
Changes in procedures can be met with resistance from staff who are used to existing processes so make sure you bring them along for the journey as to why this is happening.
It’s also important to be aware that real-time feedback can generate large amounts of data. Without effective systems in place to manage and interpret this data, it can become overwhelming and lead to important insights being missed.
If you’re feeling unsure where to start, experienced partners like True Potential Care can help.
Our team of experts can help you actively and systematically gather feedback, insights, and preferences expressed by residents, clients and their families. This can help assess the effectiveness of your care practices, identify areas of success and improvement, and make informed decisions to enhance the overall quality of care and support.
Book a free consultation to get started.
To find out how True Potential Care can support your organisation in its quality measurement journey, book a free consultation. Let’s work together to put the voices of your residents and clients at the centre of your care.
