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GLOBAL
OBSERVATORY
OF LONG-TERM
CARE

Part of the International Long-Term Care Policy Network (ILPN)

 

Maria Inacio

Registry of Senior Australians Research Centre, Flinders University and South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute

Maria Inacio

Prof Inacio is an epidemiologist with expertise in population health surveillance, registry science, health and aged care services research. She is the Director of the Registry of Senior Australians (ROSA) Research Centre at SAHMRI, Matthew Flinders Professor of Health Services and Epidemiology at Flinders University Caring Futures Institute, and a NHMRC Emerging Leadership 2 Fellow. Prof Inacio was trained at the Dartmouth Centre for Evaluative Clinical Sciences (MS 2002) and University of California, San Diego (PhD 2013). Between 2004-2015 Prof Inacio worked at Kaiser Permanente, the largest integrated healthcare provider in the US, in the development of registries.

Since 2017 Prof Inacio has developed the ROSA Research Centre program and team. ROSA is a national platform and SA-based Clinical Quality Registry developed to support the monitoring and evaluation of the quality of ageing and aged care services provided to older Australians. Prof Inacio’s research has resulted in significant contributions to the understanding of the individuals in the aged care sector nationally and how quality and safety of care can be efficiently monitored for this sector. Prof Inacio and the ROSA team have delivered several reports to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety and Department of Health and Aged Care that have informed federal level recommendations and new national program design regarding quality and safety monitoring for the aged care sector.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Countries Australia; Australia (South Australia);
Topics Access to care; Accountability; Ageing in place; Care Homes; Care integration/ coordination; Care outcomes; Care trajectories; Complex interventions; Cost-containment in LTC; Costs of LTC; COVID-19 and other infectious diseases and LTC; Data catalogues; Data science; Demand for Long-Term Care; Epidemiology and ageing trajectories; Evaluation of LTC systems and services; Financing LTC; Governance and LTC systems organisation; Healthcare access in LTC; Home/domiciliary care; Information and data systems in LTC; Long term care subsidies; LTC Policy; LTC Reforms; LTC Systems; LTC utitilisation; New models of care; Outcome measurement in LTC; Primary Health Care; Psychotropic use in care homes; Quality of care; Quality regulation and accreditation for LTC services; Relationship between LTC use and hospital use; Residential LTC services; Risk in Long-Term Care; Science communication; Value of LTC;
Methods Analysis of administrative data; Causal inference in Long-Term Care; Data science and LTC research; Longitudinal data analysis; Machine learning; Measure validation; Observational studies; Prevalence study; Projections; Quantitative data analysis; Time series analysis;
Role Research;
Interest Groups Care home markets and regulation; Data Science; Integrated Long-Term Care; Long-Term Care Policy; Quality improvement in Long-Term Care;
Websitehttps://researchnow.flinders.edu.au/en/persons/maria-inacio/
ORC.ID0000-0001-8261-2665
GOOGLE SCHOLARhttps://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gw9uzPsAAAAJ&hl=en
Other 2https://sahmri.org.au/research/programs/registry-centre/groups/rosa;
Research interests

Research Interests

  • Quality and safety of aged and health care
  • Methods to leverage existing data collections for population health surveillance and care improvement
  • Unwarranted variation in care practices and outcomes

Research Expertise

  • Epidemiology
  • Health services
  • Population health
  • Gerontology
  • Musculoskeletal disease
  • Quality and safety monitoring
  • Surgical outcomes
Key publications
  1. Inacio MC, Caughey G, Wesselingh S, on behalf of the ROSA Research Team & Steering Committee Members. Cohort profile: The Registry of Senior Australians (ROSA), Integrating Cross-sectoral Information to Evaluate Quality and Safety of Care Provided to Older BMJ Open. November 2022; 12(11):e066390.
  2. Inacio M, Lang C, Caughey G, Bray S, Harrison S, Whitehead C, Visvanathan R, Evans K, Corlis M, Cornell V, Wesselingh S. The Registry of Senior Australians (ROSA) Outcome Monitoring System: Quality and Safety Indicators for Aged Care. International Journal of Quality in Health Care. October 2020, 32(8):502-510.
  3. Caughey GE, Lang C, Bray S, Sluggett J, Whitehead C, Visvanathan R, Evans K, Corlis M, Cornell V, Barker A, Wesselingh S, Inacio M. Quality and safety indicators for home care recipients in Australia: development and cross-sectional analyses. BMJ Open. August 2022; 12(8):e063152.
  4. Davies LW, Air T, Jorissen RN, Mittinty M, Caughey G, Wesselingh S, Inacio Historical trends and future projections of demand for permanent residential aged care for older people in Australia, 2008- 2052. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association. February 2024; 25(2):252-258.e8.
  5. Eshetie TC, Caughey GE, Lang C, Ryan O, Wesselingh S, Inacio MC, on behalf of the ROSA OMS Advisory The prevalence of and variation in indicators of the quality and safety of long term aged care in Australia, 2019: a cross-sectional population-based study. Medical Journal of Australia. July 2025; 223(4): 189-196.
  6. Schwabe J, Caughey GE, Jorissen R, Comans T, Gray L, Westbrook J, Braithwaite J, Hibbert P, Wesselingh S, Sluggett J, Wabe N, Inacio MC. Setting Standards in Residential Aged Care: Identifying Achievable Benchmarks of Care for Long-term Aged Care International Journal for Quality in Health Care. November 2024; 36(4):mzae105.