Around 33,000 New Zealanders access aged residential care (ARC) services each year, including dementia and psychogeriatric care. Those entering ARC are also doing so at an older age, and with increasing levels of dependency and complex health needs.
With this in mind, we are developing quality improvement initiatives in partnership with ARC sector stakeholders and aged care facilities.
The aim is to support the sector to build a culture of continuous learning and development, and ultimately to improve the experience of care.
We engage with sector stakeholders, aged care facilities, staff and consumers, build strong partnerships and support quality improvement activity and capability building that can be sustained in the future. Current initiatives we support include:
- Deterioration Early Warning System (DEWS) feasability study - testing a new system developed in NZ to detect acute deterioration and escalation of care for aged care residents
- ARC caregiver guides - point of care reference tools to support decision-making for health care assistants in aged care
- ARC Quality Leads Forum - facilitation of network meetings involving quality lead representatives from large ARC providers
Previous initiatives included:
Published: 21 Oct 2021
Modified: 22 Sep 2025
