Aged care regulation depends on external consultants: Senate Estimates

Aged Care Quality and Safety Commissioner Janet Anderson has admitted that consultants perform quality assessments on behalf of the regulator, but reassured Senate Estimates that the regulator has “a number of controls in place” and are “crystal clear” about expectations in relation to conflicts of interest.

The issue was aired at last week’s Senate Estimates, which dwelt, in the wake of the recent PwC scandal, on potential conflicts of interest with consultants performing work in the aged care sector.

“Declarations” over potential conflicts of interest are “sought and secured”, said Janet.

“In the work that we’re asking each of these independent suppliers to provide, which is effectively to deliver site audits alongside the work that my Commission does, we do not allocate a single site audit to one of these four, including KPMG, until we have ascertained whether there is any risk of a conflict.

“So, we actually... ask each of these four companies, ‘this is the site audit we have in mind. Can you please look at this and come back to us with your advice as to whether there is any reason that we should not give it to you by virtue of a potential or actual conflict of interest’?

“And there have been occasions where we have not given them a particular site audit because they’ve come back and said we have a prior or current association with that organisation.”