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Aged Care Funding Instrument

About the Aged Care Funding Instrument (ACFI)

Information about the ACFI, its history and future directions.

The Australian Government spends more than $5 billion annually to support the care for older Australians living in aged care homes. The rate of government subsidy that homes receive is based on the aged care provider’s appraisal of each resident’s care needs. The ACFI will replace the Resident Classification Scale (RCS) as the mechanism to allocate this Government subsidy from 20 March 2008.

The ACFI has been developed in response to the Review of Pricing Arrangements in Residential Aged Care (Hogan 2004) and the RCS Review (2003). It has been designed to:

• better match funding to the complex care needs of residents;
• reduce the documentation created by aged care providers to justify funding; and
• achieve higher levels of agreement between aged care staff and departmental review officers in review audits (known as validation).

The ACFI is based primarily on the resident’s dependency (need for care) rather than on care planning or care provided by an aged care home. Unlike the RCS, ACFI does not use ongoing care documentation as evidence to support funding claims.

The ACFI consists of twelve care need questions. Diagnostic information about mental and behavioural disorders and other medical conditions is also collected. This information is used to categorise residents as having low, medium or high care needs in each of the following care domains:

• Activities of daily living (ADLs)
• Behaviour
• Complex Health Care.

Structure of the ACFI Questions

Domain/ Funding	Questions	Specified Assessments	Checklist Items	What Does the Rating Measure?
Diagnoses	Mental & Behavioural	n/a	List of disorders	Primarily for Minimum Data Set
	Medical		List of medical conditions
Activities of Daily Living	1. Nutrition	n/a	Readiness to Eat Eating	Independent Supervision required Physical Assistance required
	2. Mobility		Transfers Locomotion
	3. Personal Hygiene		Dressing & Undressing Washing & Drying Grooming
	4. Toileting		Use of Toilet Toilet Completion
	5. Continence	Continence Record	Urinary Continence Faecal Continence Scheduled Toileting	Self managed Frequency of incontinence Managed by scheduling
Behaviour Supplement	6. Cognitive Skills	Psychogeriatric Assessment Scale (PAS)	PAS Score OR Minimal, Mild, Moderate, Severe Impairment Rating	Level of Impairment
	7. Wandering	Behaviour Records	Type and frequency of behaviour	Frequency of problem behaviour
	8. Verbal Behaviour
	9. Physical Behaviour
	10. Depression	Cornell Scale for Depression (CSD)	CSD Score OR Level of interference caused by symptoms	Degree of interference with regular activities Diagnosis
Complex Health Supplement	11. Medication	n/a	Time Specified procedures	Time Procedures
	12. Complex Health Care		Specified procedures	Scores for procedures

For more information please follow this link: Using the ACFI

Development of the ACFI
Information about the background, reviews and the ACFI trial

Future Directions
Newsletters and information about possible future initiatives
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