Evaluation of the Encouraging Better Practice in Aged Care (ebpac) Initiative Final Report

5COSTING ANALYSIS

This costing analysis is partly based on the financial information provided by each of the projects in their regular six-monthly reports together with the audited accounts provided with Final Report (Part 2). The completion dates of some of the projects were extended and as a result some financial information was unavailable at the time of writing this report. This report takes into account all financial information available up until 20 March 2015.

The EBPAC initiatives included a diverse range of funded projects. For many elements, there were complex causal relationships between project interventions and potential health outcomes and many of the impacts are extremely difficult to quantify. This limited the extent to which traditional economic evaluation methods could be performed. Therefore, this economic evaluation focused only on the return on investment for funding of the EBPAC initiative for government and providers.

The economic evaluation uses two primary sources of information. On the one hand, it is based on the individual project funding agreements between the Department of Social Services in which the total funded amount is outlined together with broad categories of planned expenditure. On the other hand, the receipts and expenditure reports provided as part of the regular project six-monthly reports provide a more realistic idea of the actual expenditure. The dates provided in Table , Table and Table and summarise the latest available information.

If not specified otherwise, total expenditure excludes costs defined as compulsory under EPBAC because these costs were considered to be EPBAC-specific and would not be incurred outside the project. As much as possible, we attempted to identify relevant expenditure for the calculation of unit costs. For example, cost for resource development included only expenditure incurred for resource development and workshop cost only included expenditure directly related to that.

All values are rounded to the nearest Australian Dollar and exclude GST.

5.1Cost implications of leadership and change projects

Table shows for each of the four leadership and change projects the relevant unit of counting, which are the resources developed in CL1, CL2 and RC3. In CC6 the relevant unit is the number of health professionals and consumers that participated. The next column shows the respective expenditure per unit. The last two columns show the date of the latest available receipts and expenditure reported and the total funding received.

CL1

The CL1 project received funding of $625,000 to develop and implement a competency based framework for building leadership capacities. This included learning and development methodologies as well as training resources. Unfortunately only limited cost information was available. Therefore, it had to be assumed that all project expenditure was incurred to develop and implement the resources at the participating facilities. As of 31 December 2014, the total expenditure was $617,949.

CL2

According to the funding agreement, the CL2 project received $1,200,000 to implement a clinical mentoring model in residential and community aged care services. Amongst other things, this model included a six step guide and a suite of resources. Unfortunately only limited cost information was available. Therefore, it had to be assumed that all project expenditure was incurred to develop and implement the resources at the participating facilities. As of 31 July 2014, the total expenditure was $757,626. However, this represents a considerable underspend due to a delay in the start of the project and the withdrawal of two participating sites. At the time of writing this final report further financial information was unavailable.

RC3

The RC3 project was funded to develop, implement and evaluate a toolkit and training resource to support sustainable culture change in residential aged care facilities. The total funded amount was $412,590. Again, only limited cost information was available. Therefore, it had to be assumed that all project expenditure was incurred to develop and implement the resources at the participating facilities. As of 31 May 2014, the total expenditure was $338,431.

CC6

This project received funding of $522,000 to assist community care providers deliver more person-centred care to people living with dementia. Unfortunately no receipt and expenditure information was available. Therefore all costs presented here refer to the original funding agreement. As part of the program 67 health professionals attended a train-the-trainer workshop. Total funding per attendee was $7,104. Also 248 consumers participated in this project. The funding per consumer was $1,919. Additionally, 835 community care providers received a hardcopy of the resources.

All four projects with focus on leadership and change are characterised by limited availability of cost information. Therefore it had to be assumed that the total expenditure in CL1, CL2 and RC3 were utilised in the development and application of resources. The two leadership programs CL1 and CL2 had similar costs, $617,949 and $757,626 respectively.

Table Leadership and change projects, expenditure and funding

Code	Description	Expenditure per Unit	Date	Funded Amount
CL1	1 Resource	617,949	31/12/2014	625,000
CL2	1 Resource	757,626	31/07/2014	1,200,000
RC3	1 Resource	338,431	31/05/2014	412,590
CC6	67 Health professionals	7,104	---	522,000
CC6	248 Consumers	1,919	---	522,000