<\/p>\n <\/p>\n These tools are the first measures co-designed with older people accessing aged care (both home care and residential care), and were introduced nationally by the Australian Government in April 2023 as key components of the Mandatory Quality Indicators Program for residential care.<\/p>\n Professor Ratcliffe has now obtained an NHMRC Leadership Fellowship, involving a five-year research program to investigate what impact these new assessment tools are having.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s breakthrough research that can help steer the future of aged care in Australia and reveals a decisive change in thinking to include the input of older Australians,\u201d says Professor Ratcliffe.<\/p>\n \u201cBy working with older people to develop new economic measurement tools, we can define a higher quality, fairer health care system for older people.\u201d<\/p>\n The new research will further validate the QOL-ACC and QCE-ACC tools \u2013 which are proving to be very effective because they have been co-developed with older people from the start.<\/p>\n Professor Ratcliffe\u2019s previous work identified three significant gaps compromising the quality and efficiency of care for older patients in the health care system. Firstly, the voices of older people were not being heard to outline quality of life preferences \u2013 yet this is the largest group of health care consumers requiring routine quality assessment.<\/p>\n Secondly, the quality of life measures implemented as part of an economic evaluation alongside a clinical trial have an over-reliance on proxy assessors, particularly for older patients with mild to moderate cognitive impairment and dementia.<\/p>\n Thirdly, quality of life measures typically applied in economic evaluations of interventions targeting older people were developed principally with and for younger adults \u2013 and fail to address wellbeing and Quality of life aspects that are most important to people as they age.<\/p>\n \u201cWe cannot continue using those older assessment tools,\u201d says Professor Ratcliffe. \u201cThey take away older people\u2019s influence on future health policy and health care system decision-making, and they result in system inefficiencies through the misalignment of scarce health care resources with interventions that are not highly valued by older people.<\/p>\n \u201cMy vision is to directly address these challenges by developing, validating and implementing new economic evaluation methods and evidence-based guidance to improve quality of life and quality of care outcomes for older people in our health care system.\u201d<\/p>\n The next step of Professor Ratcliffe\u2019s research will be to apply the newly developed economic evaluation methods to a series of clinical interventions and new models of care that specifically target older people.<\/p>\n \u201cGenerating new evidence-based guidance will ensure that older people with cognitive impairment and dementia are empowered to self-assess their own quality of life and quality of care experience,\u201d says Professor Ratcliffe.<\/p>\n \u201cThe voices of this highly prevalent and increasing patient group are largely excluded from research and from our health care system. Enabling their inclusion will empower older patients to drive quality improvements, influence health policy and decision-making to positively impact their health and wellbeing.<\/p>\n This team\u2019s published research and further information about measuring quality of life and quality of care experience for older adults is featured on the project website \u2013\u00a0 www.qol-acc.org<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/caring-futures-institute\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/95\/2025\/02\/julie-ratcliffe-960x1200px-240x300.jpg\")