THE Michelin Red Guide is the WORLD’S oldest restaurant guide. It awards up to three Michelin stars for excellence. Gaining or losing a star can have dramatic effects on the success of a restaurant.
From July 2020, MyAgedCare will publish its own version of the Michelin Red Guide, a Service Compliance Rating system for Australian nursing homes.
Where the Michelin guide uses three stars, the Service Compliance Rating system uses dots. Four of them.
The Service Compliance Rating system will be continuously updated and will be visible in the Find-a-Provider section of the MyAgedCare website (myagedcare.gov.au).
“The rating reflects a service’s current compliance position”, says the Department of Health.
In plain English this means the following. There’s no new information, because the information is already published in hard-to-find places. So it’s old information, but what’s new is that you can now see it more easily.
Each nursing home on MyAgedCare gets from one to four dots.
If a nursing home has one dot, it means that it is under one or more sanctions and that the care is inadequate. In other words, avoid!
Two dots means, the nursing home is operating under a notice of compliance. This is a misnomer, because it is really a notice of non-compliance: significant improvements are needed. Avoid!
Three dots means that the home has some areas where it should improve. Avoid!
Four dots means there are no known areas for improvement. Enter if you must.
Compare that with the Micheline Red Guide. One star: a very good restaurant in its category. Two stars: excellent cooking, worth a detour. Three stars: exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey.
Unlike the Michelin Red Guide, the Service Compliance Rating system on MyAgedCare does not offer a rating of excellence but a rating of appallingness. It should have one or two more dots, so that people looking for a place in a nursing home can pick a good one (five dots) or an excellent one (six dots).
