Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety: Submission in Response to Counsel Assisting’s Final Submissions

This submission to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety responds to counsel assisting’s final submissions, limited to proposed Recommendations 55 and 56 and to Commissioner Briggs’ request for comment on research and data governance. Research Australia supports dedicated Australian Government funding for research and development in aged care and ageing-related health conditions through a proposed Aged Care Research Council, funded by a special appropriation linked to aged care expenditure. It asks that the Council use transparent application processes and publish all funded research, guided by the National Health and Medical Research Council’s open access policy, and that research and development be defined to include innovation, such as evaluating assistive technologies and quality indicators, with funding and clear accountability for implementing and scaling research findings. Citing its 2020 opinion poll, it reports public support for more research on ageing and aged care. On data, it supports an aged care national minimum dataset governed by the proposed Aged Care Commission and managed by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), collected in near real time, with researchers given access to organisation- and individual-level data and the AIHW funded for data sharing and linkage. It maintains the Council should fund research across a continuum from the onset of ageing-related conditions rather than aged care alone, with boundaries agreed with other funders, and notes that whether it can operate virtually depends on how administration is outsourced.