Older people must be at centre of new system, says Day

Department of Health and Aged Care assistant secretary of harmonisation and regulatory strategy branch Robert Day encouraged aged care providers at the Invox National Support at Home conference to remember the core of all the “busy-ness” surrounding the transition to the new Aged Care Act and the upcoming election are the rights and wellbeing of older people.

Referencing Age Discrimination Commissioner Robert Fitzgerald’s comments on the inclusivity in aged care panel earlier on Tuesday morning, Mr Day said it was important to “go beyond the transcactionalism” of agreements and billing arrangements.

“One of our key pillars is a rights-based approach to regulation, and by that we mean a system that values the wants and needs of older people, that ensures they are treated with respect, that protects them from harm, abuse and neglect,” he told delegates on day 1 of the event, which drew over 700 people in person and online.

During his presentation Mr Day ran through some of the provider obligations under the new Act, highlighting:

• having practices in place to ensure the organisation acts consistently with the rights of older people
• obligations to provide information to the older people using services about their rights
• having a complaints mechanism in place so that people can raise concerns and have them dealt with

The complaints mechanism will be one of the primary ways the department has conversations with older people about where they feel their rights aren’t being honoured in the aged care system, he added.

In recognition that it has been a major topic of discussion, Mr Day did touch on care management in the Support at Home program – calling it a “central part of the idea of support at home.” 

“It’s about having the capacity in the system, the capacity in the services that we deliver to know how a person is going, know where their needs change, respond to those appropriately, whether that’s changing the service mix, whether that’s rearranging a service because it doesn’t meet an individual’s needs or preferences, whether that’s arranging for a referral for a reassessment of need,” he said.

“One of the key changes is rather than billing for that item as a line item in the individual’s package, there is pooled funding equivalent to 10 per cent of all of the people that you care for at a service delivery branch level. 

“And my understanding is that there’s a degree of discretion for providers how big those service delivery branches are, so how big your pool is and how many of them you have across the country – and the reason for pooling that is that we recognise there’s not a one-size-fits-all to case management and the workload isn’t neat and even.”

The department recognises there will be more work at the start and then someone’s needs may be fairly stable for a while before they start needing multiple reassessments in a short period of time because there’s a deterioration in their health, Mr Day said.

“So the idea that you’ve got a pool of funds and you can then bill as much care management from that as you need for an individual is about giving that flexibility in the way we run care management,” he explained.

Mr Day also discussed provider registration, the deeming process, accessing allied health services and end-of-life pathways and encouraged conference attendees to ask him and his team questions throughout the two-day event.

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