A National Aged Care Medication Roundtable

This project is supported by an NHMRC Partnership Project grant (APP2006957).

Project members

Professor Johanna Westbrook Professor and Director	A/Prof Magda Raban Associate Professor	Professor Meredith Makeham Clinical Professor, Macquarie Medical School	Professor Jeffrey Braithwaite Professor and Founding Director
Dr Tim Badgery-Parker Research Fellow	Dr Virginia Mumford Senior Research Fellow	Dr Nas Wabe Senior Research Fellow	Dr Amy Nguyen Research Fellow
Dr Karla Seaman Research Fellow	Dr Sandun Malpriya Silva Research Fellow	Dr Rachel Urwin Research Fellow	Dr Andrea Timothy Research Fellow
Dr Guogui Huang Postdoctoral Research Fellow	Joanna Clive Research Assistant	Desiree Firempong Research Assistant	Isabelle Meulenbroeks Research Assistant and PhD Candidate
Sangita Neupane Research Assistant

Project description, aims and methods

Description

Older Australians with the most complex health needs live in residential care. Poor medication management in residential aged care has been identified as a major problem, accounting for over a third of complaints made to the Australian Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission. Medication use in residential aged care is extensive, with over 80% of residents taking five or more medications each day and 40% taking ten or more. For this project we have formed a consortium of aged care providers, consumers and policy advisors to take a data-driven approach to improving medication safety and quality. The National Aged Care Medication Roundtable leverages electronic medication administration systems to better understand the quality of medication management in the aged care sector and a cyclical process for identifying, trialling and testing interventions to improve safe and effective use of medicines.

Aims

The overall aim of the project is to co-design, implement and evaluate an Aged Care Medication Roundtable under-pinned by a learning health systems model.

Aim 1: Co-develop medication quality indicators and tailored data presentation formats for reporting to the Roundtable to facilitate benchmarking and evidence-based action.

Aim 2: Benchmark data, and co-design and test nudge interventions to improve antibiotic and antipsychotic medication use, applying stepped wedge cluster randomised controlled trials.

Aim 3: Evaluate the processes and outcomes of the Roundtable and establish mechanisms for expansion and sustainability.

A learning health systems model for improving medication management in residential aged care.

Related stream of research

Aged Care Evaluation and Research (ACER) Team

Project status

Current

Centres related to this project

Centre for Health Systems and Safety Research

Centre for Healthcare Resilience and Implementation Science