Reform delay stagnates sector, says report
Home care providers are “performing in a climate of operating issues,” according to StewartBrown.
The second postponement of the Support at Home program is stalling the industry, according to a new report.
Home care providers are “performing in a climate of operating issues,” say the authors of StewartBrown’s Aged Care Financial Performance Survey Report for the nine months ending 31 March 2023 .
Most notably, having to still deliver services within a convoluted regulatory environment. Reform delay – until 1 July 2025 – “creates a policy void which has led to a stagnation of innovation for many providers,” says the report.
Another crucial concern the authors of the 24-page report highlight is the workforce shortfall. “Staffing remans a critical issue for aged care,” StewartBrown managing partner Stuart Hutcheon told Community Care Review.
As for the financials, data from 69,753 home care packages shows the current operating result decreasing to a surplus of $3.39 per client per day, compared to $4.29 the previous year.
Revenue utilisation has decreased to 84.9 per cent of available package funding and unspent funds have increased to an average of $11,778 for every care recipient – unspent funds are now in excess of an aggregate $2.6 billion.
“Home care financial performance and related issues should not be ignored,” Mr Hutcheon told CCR. “The utilisation of funding remains less than 85 per cent with the unspent funds per consumer increasing accordingly. This has led to reduced profitability and pressure on providing the range of care services required.”
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If I had known twenty five years ago that coming to work in aged care in (several roles and now for the last fifteen as a case manager in home care packages) that I was going to end up with an insecure work-future, disregarded by funders and organisations alike as ‘unnecessary’, continued poor pay (no increase for us despite being tertiary qualified and far below what peers in the public sector get). Ever increasing role-creep and higher and higher volumes of caseloads with complex needs, the emotional damage that I would have to endure day after day from disconnected senior executive managers and politicians? I wouldn’t have joined either.
Feel your pain. This is why I stepped away from HCP work 2 years ago-completely burn out and unwell. The CM role became about the administration of funds/purchases, creating revenue streams and arguing with everyone about what was “in” and what was “out” . The whole program & process has been devalued by being marketised. It has become quite a toxic space-regardless of the rhetoric spouted. There are battle lines between clients and providers with the CM in the middle.