Residents' Experience Surveys

About Resident Experience

In 2022, the Australian Government reinstated the Residents’ Experience Survey (formerly the Consumer Experience Interviews), which was previously undertaken and published by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission (the Commission).

The 2023 round of the Residents’ Experience Surveys will commence in February and conclude in October 2023.

The surveys will again be conducted by the third-party consortium engaged by the department in 2022 - IQVIA in a consortium with Access Care Network Australia (ACNA) and Health Consult.

The survey will continue to include a set of 14 questions that participants will be asked. However, this year, several small changes have been made to simplify the process, including modifying question 12. It has been changed from, “Do you feel at home here?” to “How likely are you to recommend this residential aged care home to someone?”. These changes reflect feedback from the 2022 interviews. You can view the 2023 Residents’ Experience Survey questions online.

These questions were developed by the Commission with the help of La Trobe University’s Lincoln Centre for Research on Ageing.

As part of the survey process the consortium will:

• contact all residential aged care homes to schedule a suitable time to visit and undertake the face-to-face survey
• survey around 20 per cent of residents across 2,700 Commonwealth funded residents aged care homes
• ensure participants are representative of all residents and include those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and residents with special needs, as defined by the Aged Care Act 1997
• protect the identity of residents participating from smaller residential services by making sure a larger sample size is surveyed
• consult the representatives of those residents with special circumstances, while always endeavouring to survey the resident directly where possible.

Read more information about the 2023 Residents’ Experience Survey process on the Residents’ Experience website.

Maintaining resident privacy

We take the protection of residents’ privacy very seriously. Resident information is being protected as per the Aged Care Act 1997. The identity of participating residents will not be revealed, and their confidentiality will be protected in all documentation that may be shared or published. The information collected from the surveys will be kept strictly confidential and securely stored.

Viewing the results

During the 2022 round, 37,443 residents living across 2,689 residential aged care homes participated in the survey. The results were used to inform the Residents’ Experience Rating in Star Ratings. You can view Star Ratings for residential aged care providers on the My Aged Care website by clicking on the ‘Find a provider’ tool. Star Ratings help older people to compare the quality and safety of aged care homes.

The findings from the 2023 surveys will be collated into a Resident Experience Report for each home. This information will show an aggregated response for each question based on the survey results and will be provided to the participating aged care homes. The results will also be reflected in Star Ratings.

Webinars

• May 2022 – Recording of the CEI Information Webinar conducted by IQVIA is now available. The webinar covered the purpose of CEIs, interview methodology, resident involvement and how we will protect their privacy.
• August 2022 – Recording of the CEI webinar. The webinar was an opportunity for Providers to learn more about the Star Rating System and how the CEIs feed into them. This webinar also covered the purpose of the CEIs, the methodology and the importance of participating.
• March 2023 – Recording of the 2023 Residents’ Experience webinar. This webinar was an opportunity for providers of residential aged care to learn about the changes made to this year’s survey. Insights into the 2022 interviews and findings from an independent evaluation were also shared with participants.    

Resources

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