DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND AGEING, MANAGEMENT OF EXPENDITURE AND RESIDENT LINKED INFORMATION SYSTEM
INTRODUCTION
1 Community Aged Care Packages (CACP) are a Commonwealth-funded program designed to provide assistance to enable frail or disabled older people with complex care needs to continue living in the community.
2 The Management of Expenditure and Resident Linked Information System (MERLIN) records the administration of payments to providers of Community Aged Care Packages. This data are used primarily by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing (DoHA) and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).
3 The collection contains information on the personal characteristics of CACP recipients,and their admission, separation and service provider details.
4 In this product, data are presented on the number of CACP recipients in each Local Government Area (LGA) in NSW.
SCOPE
5 The scope of this collection is all persons receiving a Community Aged Care Package.
6 Data on service outlets receiving flexible funding under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Strategy and on Multi-Purpose service outlets are not available as their recipients are not included in the current national database. As at June 30 2005, these services provided a total of 2,233 residential care places and 490 care packages Australia wide. The total number of residential places and care packages offered Australia-wide at 30 June 2005 was, respectively, 161,165 and 32,588.
REFERENCE PERIOD
7 The data relates to people receiving Community Aged Care Packages as at 30 June 2005.
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 Community Aged Care Package (CACP): A Commonwealth-provided funding package to be used to purchase assistance which will enable frail or disabled older people with complex care needs to continue living in the community.
GEOGRAPHY
11 The location of the service outlet (not the service recipient) is geocoded to the Statistical Local Area (SLA). In this product, SLAs are aggregated to LGAs. The 2005 edition of the Australian Standard Geographic Classification (ASGC) (cat. no. 1216.0) was used in the coding.
COLLECTION METHODOLOGY
12 Where an Aged Care Assessment Team (ACAT) assesses a person and recommends that the person receive a CACP, a delegate of the ACAT 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.
13 Details from this form are entered into the MERLIN 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.
14 Data from ACCMIS are provided to AIHW, who produce a national publication on recipients of CACPs.
ACCURACY
15 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.
16 The location of a service-providing outlet may be in a different LGA to the usual residence of the care recipient, and as such, care should be taken in the interpretation of this data.
17 Given that the data are from DoHA's payment system to service outlets, the collection is effectively a census, which means that the data 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 the reporting of data by respondents;
- errors in the capturing or processing of data;
- estimation for missing or misreported data; and
- definition and classification errors.
COLLECTION HISTORY
18 The AIHW publication Community Aged Care Packages in Australia, 2003–04 (AIHW cat. no. AGE 54)is the seventh annual compilation of these statistics. In late 2002, a national census of Community Aged Care Package providers was conducted. This material was published in the AIHW report Community Aged Care Packages Census 2002 (AIHW cat. no. AGE 35).
PUBLISHED DATA
19 Further information can be found in the publication Community Aged Care Packages in Australia, 2003–04 (AIHW cat. no. Age 54) and also in Community Aged Care Packages: How do they compare? — Aged And Community Care Service Development and Evaluation Report No. 32, Mathur S, Evans A and Gibson DM, 1997.
RELATED WEB SITES
20 The Department of Health and Ageing web site can be found at <www.health.gov.au>. The AIHW web site can be found at <www.aihw.gov.au>.
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