Disclosure and Reporting of Governance Practices by Australian Residential Aged Care Providers: Accountability to Stakeholders

Abstract

<p>The Residential Aged Care (RAC) Sector in Australia is significant in terms of the ageing population (consistent with most developed countries), and the fact that it will affect the majority of the population in terms of the need for RAC at some stage in their lives. Having access to information for stakeholders to make informed and timely decisions regarding the comparison of RAC providers is often difficult due to there being higher demand than supply, small timeframe to make decisions with a high emotional content and the difficulty in changing providers. Information was gathered from the RAC provider’s website, reports and other publicly available information, to determine their level of governance disclosure, over a three year period. It was found that the RAC providers should not just be limited to their legal reporting requirements (mandatory), but instead should also endeavour to disclose additional voluntary information, in order for their stakeholders to make informed decisions. In addressing the Australian RAC Sector’s stakeholder governance information needs, a governance framework (RAC Sector Governance Framework) and the G-CARD (Governance Checklist Aged Residential Disclosure) Model were developed for this sector to improve governance disclosure. This research provides new insights and a basis for further research to determine whether the Australian RAC Sector have improved their consistency and adequacy of their governance disclosure through the use of the proposed G-CARD Model and associated framework.</p>