Triennial Plan: Home and Community Care Queensland 2008-2011

6 Building the evidence base
6.1 Nutrition
Healthy eating is just as important for seniors as it is for young adults,
adolescents and children. While the emphasis is on ‘healthy’, it is also
important that eating should be an enjoyable and a sociable activity that
older people can look forward to.
Ageing can be associated with changes in lifestyle which affect the food
older people eat. Loneliness, boredom, depression and worrying about the
future can lead them to neglect their diet (skipping meals and generally eating
poorly). Poor dental health can make the task of eating healthy food painful
and/or difficult. Rising food costs and other financial impacts may cause
older people to go without adequate intake to maintain an optimal nutritional
status. Loss of taste and smell senses can diminish the enjoyment of food
thus affecting the desire to eat. Loss of a partner who prepared the meals
can leave older people, particularly men, vulnerable.
Studies on nutrition of Australians indicate that a number of older people have
poor diets, including a shortage of intake of fibre, some vitamins and minerals.
As a result, their health can suffer, creating a dependency on HACC services.
The HACC program currently provides funding for an estimated 2.5 million
meals annually through the Meals on Wheels program, as well as meals at
Centre-Based Day Care Centres and other food services. Within some regions
Allied Health funding has been utilised to provide dietetics services, with a
range of innovative responses developed that improve individuals’ nutrition
status as well as their functional independence with regard to meal preparation
and related activities (e.g. shopping).
Over the course of the triennium the program will investigate alternative
service delivery models that address nutrition with the target population.
This will include provision of funding for programs or initiatives that develop
new service models and approaches, as well as the possible provision of oneoff
funding to existing services (primarily Meals on Wheels) to assist them to
adjust existing services to incorporate an independence promoting approach.
6.2 Minimum Data Set (MDS)
Information management, in particular the development of MDS, is pivotal
to effective planning, purchasing and contract management for the program.
Over the past two years Queensland has undertaken a significant project to
transition providers from version one to version two of the reporting elements.
While the program currently experiences a high participation rate in
submissions (approximately 90% per quarter), an analysis of some data
elements would indicate that there remain a number of data quality and data
integrity issues. Over the triennium the program will develop and implement
a project to identify common data element errors and work across the sector
to address these issues.
Triennial Plan 2008–2011 23