[Opening visual of slide with text saying ‘Tech Talk’, ‘Digital transformation for the aged care sector’, ‘Webinar Series’, ‘Digital Services’, ‘within Corporate Operations Group’, ‘Department of Health and Aged Care’, ‘Australian Government with Crest (logo)’, ‘Department of Health and Aged Care’, ‘Tech Talk #22’, ‘2 April 2025’]
[The visuals during this webinar are of each speaker presenting in turn via video, with reference to the content of a PowerPoint presentation being played on screen]
Jessica Holmick:
We’re back to talk about digital transformation for the aged care sector. My name’s Jessica Holmick and I’m stepping in for Janine Bennett who unfortunately couldn’t join us today. I support Janine as the Engagement Lead for the Department’s Digital Transformation Program and I will be your moderator for today’s webinar.
[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Welcome’, ‘Connect by phone’, ‘Dial-in 02 8318 0010 PIN 110 348 66’, ‘Session is recorded’, ‘Australian Government with Crest (logo)’, ‘Department of Health and Aged Care’]
I’m joining you today from Canberra the land of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people. I’d like to recognise those traditional owners as well as the people and families with continuing connection to the land and waters of this region. The contributions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to improving healthcare for more than 1600 generations is greatly respected by the Department and by communities across Australia.
So quick housekeeping before we start. If you have any connection issues during your time with us today our phone dial in details are on your screen and also in your meeting invite. Today’s session will be recorded and the video will be shared on the Department’s website in the coming weeks so you and your colleagues can watch it again as a refresher and refer back to if you need.
Just a couple of important things. Before we go any further I have a few remarks about caretaker. As you know the Prime Minister has announced a Federal election for Saturday the 3rd of May. Accordingly the Government is now in caretaker mode. What that means is that in accordance with these conventions we will be limiting our statements today to factual issues and matters of administration. We will also be guided by that in the questions we will be able to answer. So you can find out more about the caretaker conventions at the link that the team will drop into the chat. And as always we’ll finish on our Q&A.
We usually would bring people to stage for our Q&A segment but this time we’ll only be taking written questions to ensure we can get the most accurate answers to you. So we really encourage you to use that Q&A icon that’s on your screen to submit your questions ahead of time.
All right. So the purpose of these webinars is to both be informative and to have a two way conversation which is why we do our best to leave plenty of time at the end for questions and for discussions. If you have a question please share it by opening up your Q&A tab in the top navigation bar on your Teams window and type in your question so that they’re ready and waiting when you get to our Q&A session. Keeping in mind that our focus here at Tech Talk is on our technology and our delivery work. We’ll answer all questions we can on the spot where we’re able to and we’ll take things offline where we need to.
In terms of previous Q&A we had many questions at our last Tech Talk. We’ve been able to address a good number of these particularly in some of the resources we will refer to in a moment. But if you haven’t seen the answers to your questions yet I want to assure you that those answers are coming. Please keep in mind we’re taking a planned approach to how we provide you with these responses although they won’t be a one to one response and to not duplicate information that’s already available. We know that you have a lot of information coming your way at the moment and we’re being really careful to not add to that noise, but to I guess complement and help guide you and direct you to the right answers. So we’re grateful for your patience and for your understanding in that matter.
Journalists I want to quickly welcome – sorry. I would like to quickly welcome any media representatives today. We appreciate your ongoing interest in this important work for the aged care sector. Just a quick reminder that media questions should be going to the Department’s media and events team. So that’s at news@health.gov.au. And they are very much best placed to assist you with these questions. And now onto our agenda.
So first up is our very own CDIO. Fay Flevaras will be providing us with an update on our digital transformation roadmap and some other short but important updates. Then we’ll be welcoming Declan Lutekina and Olivia Trembath from Services Australia who will be spending a few minutes on their Health Systems Developer Portal. Then I’ll be handing over to Alithea Seemann and Chris Bailie to talk about the work we’re doing to understand digital maturity and digital impacts for 1 July. Then it’s a welcome return to Support at Home with our own Lezah Rushton who will be joined by Jacqui Houghton from Services Australia. We’ll also take a quick pause there to have a mini Q&A because Lezah and Jacqui have to head off for another commitment. So we want to honour their time with us as much as possible today but also honour their other commitments. Then we’ll be handing over to Rob Day who will be giving you some information about the new regulatory model and provide a preview. And as always we’ll finish up with our Q&A.
So I think that’s all from me for the moment. So I’m going to hand over to Fay to take you for the rest of our time, digital transformation update. Over to you Fay.
Fay Flevaras:
[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Digital Transformation Update’, ‘Fay Flevaras’, ‘Chief Digital Information Officer’, ‘Digital Services within Corporate Operations Group’, ‘Department of Health and Aged Care’, ‘Australian Government with Crest (logo)’, ‘Department of Health and Aged Care’]
Thanks Jess. And thanks everyone. Hello. It’s good to be back. And thank you all for coming. As always a special welcome for those who are attending your very first Tech Talk. To those who registered to attend our February webinar and were instead placed on a waitlist I’m really sorry we missed you. But we did bump up against a technical issue that we needed to increase our audience numbers and we saw that we kind of hit a limit there. We’ve made a few changes since then to ensure that everyone who registers can attend.
In my update today I’ll talk about our phased delivery approach and share the links to some new resources. And as always we will start with our digital transformation roadmap. So this is the forecast of the work on our current plan. We do try and give six months ahead but there’s so much going on it doesn’t all fit into one slide. So we’ve got everything listed here until June and in our next Tech Talk we’ll go beyond that. But I share this with my usual disclaimer. Think of this as our technical delivery roadmap. So what you see here is our digital delivery plan. It is important to note this timeline supports the aged care reform agenda but it should not be considered an official commitment. That happens elsewhere outside our Tech Talks. You will notice that the roadmap has changed since our last update but as I say in all my Tech Talks we make a point of sharing early this roadmap, and often, to be transparent and open about what we’re working on and what we’re planning for. But sometimes things will change and where they do we’ll call them out so you know about them.
As you can see since our last time we met with you we’ve had a nice release over the weekend. And so that was successful. And we’ve made changes both to our GPMS and our B2G environments. Much of the release supports the new regulatory reporting that Rob will go and cover into a little bit later in his update. But I’ll mention a few things really briefly here. Our first update is the quarterly indicators. The quality indicators. Sorry folks. So in GPMS we’ve adopted the restrictive practices terminology and the enhancement of the operational date to be consistent with the new regulations. Likewise for B2G quality indicator APIs we’ve updated the term physical restraint to restrictive practices. So this API update will ensure seamless data flow from providers to GPMS via the API if they choose to while adhering to the latest standards and requirements. So providers will be able to submit their quality indicator data via an API accurately and efficiently just as if they were doing it through GPMS. So just so you know folks those APIs are available today. And if you want to sort of cut down on the swivel chairing between doing it once in your system and twice in ours, hit up your software vendor and ask them have they connected through to these APIs.
We also have the GPMS provider data model that delivers the provider register for the new Aged Care Act. It also supports the new registered provider structure so that will enable the deeming of our approved providers under the current legislation to become registered providers under the new Act. And we’ve also added a preview capability providing data to providers as part of their deeming process. So trying to give you the information you need as easily as possible. A database of registered providers will maintain current registration statuses and related information. Again Rob will cover that in more detail a little bit later. And lastly we have the care service model and underpinning business model for all the aged care services. And the model supports the operation of access referrals and claiming capabilities. That’s including but not limited to providers, assessors and clients. So lots going on folks.
As I said if we can zoom out a little bit I do like to give you guys a bit of a forward view. And so we thought we would just show you how we’re planning for some of those future releases, and so what are our kind of high level phases towards that. So this is that kind of view as we speak. This kind of lines up with the narrative that we talk about, the staged implementation approach. And so in the next Tech Talk we’ll start to give you the detail underneath these releases just like we did in the previous slide.
And so those releases that I’m talking to you about are the staged implementation changes here. The Department is implementing foundational changes to ICT capabilities and support of the Australian Government’s aged care reform program. This is substantial change for the aged care sector and the Department is focused on supporting providers in readiness for the new Aged Care Act commencing on the 1st of July this year. So the staged implementation approach the Department is taking focuses on identifying providers currently using existing Government systems and dispersing the key changes over time to support the transition. So we’ve released the digital roadmap which outlines the delivery of these ICT capabilities through stages in April, July and October as we’ve said, and these stages enable the Department to prioritise the design and delivery and testing of each of the ICT components prior to being released for providers and consumers to use.
If you’re in our sector partner community you might be part of the team that actually helps codesign some of these things as we’re doing them, but in essence this is kind of the outward facing outcomes view of the world.
Key changes in the staged implementation plan. So in April the Department will provide information to each registered provider regarding the structure of their entity and associated information as a result of seeing and due to take effect for the 1st of July. So the three month period will enable providers to work with the Department to prepare for a smooth transition. So you should be getting that imminently if you don’t already have it. July the Act is planned to commence requiring both provider and Government systems to deliver core functionality to support legislative changes. So new service types and lists to be used to operate the new Support at Home program. You’ve got the regulatory changes that we’re going to go through for organisations and the reporting needs. And of course claims and payment changes as well.
In October is when the quality and financial reporting will commence against the registered provider entity. This avoids significant changes to existing reporting requirements on the 1st of July, so during a peak period of transition. And then in February next year some detailed provider reporting to the Department around Support at Home has been postponed until then in relation to service provision and individual budget expenditure. So you can see the kind of staged part of it. The Department would like to thank aged care providers for their continued and constructive collaboration through the Aged Care Transition Taskforce as well as a number of supporting reference and working groups that are being held across the Department. The Department’s committed to supporting providers transitioning to the Act including enabling systems that we understand are likely to continue to iterate and enhance over time.
So moving on to summarise just some of our recent publications of resources that are available to you. And we’ll share these links to the chat as well. So you can either use your phone and kind of scan the QR code or just hit the link. First we have a sector digital readiness pack has been released. This resource was developed in consultation with the Aged Care Transition Taskforce and outlines what readiness means in relation to the new Aged Care Act and provides a high level roadmap of changes. So that’s one piece.
Moving onto the next one we have a resource to be aware of which is the new Aged Care Act Sector Change Plan. It’s also on the website. This plan outlines the different communication, engagement, guidance and training activities from our Department. It also has the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission and Services Australia to support older people and the sector transition to the new Aged Care Act. So it includes a detailed timeline of when upcoming resources and activities are anticipated all throughout the year.
And the Support at Home Program Manual is now available as well on the Health website. The manual helps registered providers understand their responsibilities and the delivery of care under the new Support at Home Program. So it includes things like how the program operates, how to work with participants to develop a care plan and a budget. It includes information on participants’ contributions, the short term pathways for assistive technologies and home modifications, restorative care and end of life services. So this is an early version of the manual and an updated version will be published once the legislative rules are finalised.
So no shortage of resources available. A reminder we’ve got ahead of the Q&A our frequently asked – an FAQ for Support at Home is already available. So we do ask that you guys have a read of these to make sure that we haven’t already answered your question. And chances are some of your questions will have been answered there already. And timely reminder about tomorrow’s Support at Home webinar. So if you want to just deep dive into Support at Home the QR code is there. It will give older people, families and carers an update on the Support at Home Program. So it’s open to a wider audience than normal, including information for existing care recipients and transitioning into Support at Home from the 1st of July. And the Department will be joined by representatives from the Older Persons Advocacy Network, Ageing Australia and the Council of Ageing Australia to discuss the changes. So if you’ve got some clients who might be interested and who have been asking for more information around the transition and what it means for them please work with them to register to attend.
And finally in other news we’ve been delivering a series of workshops to regional and remote locations across the country. I’ve been giving you a bit of an update as we’ve been going. We’re a little over halfway through that and we’ve spoken to more than 300 aged care workers from more than 50 organisations. We’re sharing information and strategies around digital capability and we’re having conversations. There’s a lot of conversations and there’s a lot of perspectives out there. So for example people want simplified reporting so they don’t have to share the same data points five times to five different reports, or they click as few boxes as possible when they’re doing their reporting for 24/7 nursing. And so that we speak the same language through shared standards. So all the information and feedback we get we take on board and we use that to help inform what we do going forward. They want Government to be as easily accessible without needing to understand which Department does what. And so as much as possible, and you’ll see that today, where we’ve got representation across Government. We’re one Government.
And we’ve heard some kind words out there too. Thank you for those. We’re pleased that you’ve noticed the incremental changes we work hard to bring and we know there’s more to do and we’re here with you for the long haul. So by our next Tech Talk in May these workshops will have been complete and we’ll bring you a more detailed playback. And in the meantime find out more about the SDAP and how to apply. The link is on the slide and in the chat.
Okay. I think now that we’ve said all the welcomes to our colleagues and given you the resources I’d like to bring our Services Australia colleagues to the forefront. They’re going to walk us through the Health Systems Developer Portal. We’ve had many questions in the past about this around the APIs across the two Departments and it’s great that you’ve been able to join us here today. I’m handing over to you guys. Thanks Declan. Yep. Over to you guys.
Olivia Trembath:
[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Health Systems Developer Portal – end to end process’, ‘Olivia Trembath’, ‘Assistant Director’, ‘Integrated Developer Management Office’, ‘Services Australia’, ‘Declan Luketina’, ‘Assistant Director’, ‘Integrated Developer Management Office’, ‘Services Australia’]
Thanks Fay. Hi everybody. My name’s Olivia Trembath and I’m the Assistant Director for IDMO which is the Integrated Developer Management Office with Services Australia. One of the IDMO’s key roles is managing Services Australia relationships with the software developer industry. Following on from numerous questions raised at the last sector partners meeting we thought it would be beneficial to present today on these portals around the types of documentation you will find in these portals, the differences between them, the requirements to access Services Australia Health Systems Developer Portal and frequently asked questions, plus what you’ll find in the Health Systems Developer Portal which will help you to develop a software product to integrate with our agency. So let’s take a look at the differences between each of these portals.
Let’s commence with the Services Australia Health Systems Developer Portal. So the Health Systems Developer Portal assists software developers to integrate software solutions for health programs and aged care provider payment interactions with Government. So we have Medicare Online including Department of Veteran Affairs, ECLIPSE, AIR or Australian Immunisation Register, Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme, PBS Online, and the Aged Care Online claiming channels. The portal also provides access to agreements and the associated policies, terms and conditions for use of the portal, contains application programming interfaces, or API for short, licence development material and resources. It outlines the steps for integration testing and production release and provides access to the digital assistant chatbot that we call hAPI.
Services Australia Health Systems Developer Portal is a secure platform so developers can access the vendor environment and may also want to build and test for other programs that we have such as My Medicare, PBS or Chronic Wound Consumables Scheme. Then we have the B2G Developer Portal which belongs to the Department of Health and Aged Care. This assists software developers to create integrated software solutions that enable streamlined reporting via aged care providers to the Department, quality indicators, 24/7 registered nurse reporting. But the portal also contains resources for accessing foundational and beta API specifications, outlines the steps for testing and software conformance assessment, ensuring secure integration with Government systems, provides access to agreements and associated policies, terms and conditions for use of the portal. Noting that the difference is the B2G portal primarily provides APIs required to automate reporting to health requirements of provider management and registered nurses, and the B2G portal does also contain documentation required to authenticate using RAM.
So to develop software for our digital health and aged care programs you will need to register your organisation in the Services Australia Health Systems Developer Portal. Access to the Health Systems Developer Portal requires a registration process because of the sensitive health and aged care data that will be accessed via integrating with Services Australia systems. Only software developers require access to the portal because it contains APIs to aid in the development and integration of our web services, licence material and developer guidelines aimed at provider a better user experience for the end users, a vendor environment to help test your product and a communication channel which is used by software developers in collaboration with our product integration team throughout preliminary and integration testing phases.
Any software developer aiming to connect to the aged care APIs need to register with our portal and the B2G portal. But if you want to access the aged care APIs to build, develop, test, integrate into your software product to transact with Services Australia you will need to access the Services Australia Health Systems Developer Portal by completing the registration form. Services Australia wants your software product to meet certain standards including conformance to our Interface Agreement and associated policies to make it easier for your customers to interact with us.
To develop software for Services Australia digital health and aged care programs it’s a step by step process. So let’s take a look at these steps. Step one, register for an individual PRODA account. We need PRODA to accurately identify the individuals requiring access to our systems. This is completed by registering, submitting and activating an individual PRODA account. Step two, register for the Health Systems Developer Portal. Initial registration and set up of the portal is required to be conducted by the organisation’s director or authorised officer as they are the responsible individual for accepting the Interface Agreement and associated policies. But we’ll go into that in more detail shortly. We are required to identify the organisation which is a manual verification process by our developer liaison team. The authorised officer may be contacted by email to provide further information so please ensure the authorised officer is aware of this process and monitors for any requests. Because only a legally authorised officer that has delegation to act on behalf of the organisation can accept the Interface Agreement and its associated policies and the Interface Agreement and its associated policies is a legal contract between your organisation and Services Australia.
Whilst developer liaison continues with the onboarding process you will be contacted by our IDMO team for a software developer initial registration meeting. The software developer initial registration meetings don’t delay your access. This meeting is about steering you towards the documentation required to develop your product, provide a high level overview of testing and integration and the agency’s expectations of developers to integrate with our systems.
So step three you need to logon to the portal. So once your access is granted the authorised officer will receive an email containing a username and login details. This is assigned to you by our online technical support team or OTS and they will enable you to login to the organisation’s account into the portal.
Step four, invite your staff to the portal. After logging in and accepting the Interface Agreement and its associated policies the authorised officer is able to delegate access. However the authorised officer remains the responsible individual for all activity conducted within the portal and it is their requirement to ensure all portal details are kept up to date. Conversations held with IDMO will direct you towards the documentation in the portal which will provide you with all the information you need to do to progress to step five, developing your products, step six, preliminary testing, step seven, integration testing, and step eight, registering with Services Australia for e-business for software pre-deployment. Please note though in step eight and only for aged care web services the NAPS ID is used to register with Services Australia which identifies the location not by registering with a minor ID. Minor IDs do apply to other Services Australia web services for example Medicare and the Australian Immunisation Register.
So let’s take a look at some registration FAQs. Let’s run through who needs to register to develop, share a couple of examples and tips to ensure the right individual completes the Health Systems Developer Portal registration form in the right way. So point one. Which organisations need to register? Access to the Health Systems Developer Portal is restricted to developers building for Services Australia payments and claiming, and that’s a cybersecurity requirement.
An example of an organisation that needs to register for the Health Systems Developer Portal could be – let’s go with an aged care facility wants to develop their own in-house software product with on-site technical support staff or a software business wanting to build a product that offers for example Support at Home APIs, Medicare Online and AIR API functionality, with staff located in Australia, each state, that will provide product support.
Point two. Which organisations don’t need to register? Aged care providers or organisations who are using a third party software application also do not require access to the Health Systems Developer Portal. Who from the organisation needs to register? So it’s important that the right individual registering in the portal has the appropriate delegation to enter into agreement with Services Australia. Portal registration needs to be done by the authorised person for the organisation. An authorised person is a director listed on the ASIC register, a responsible person listed in the Australian Charities and Not for Profits Commission website, ACNC, or a sole trader etcetera, or an authorised delegate nominated by one of these individuals listed on the ASIC or ACNC register to act on behalf of the organisation in capacity as an authorised officer.
So just going back to my example of an aged care facility wants to develop their own in-house software product with on-site technical support staff. So who registers? Well that would be the individual on the ASIC register is the aged care facility CEO therefore they are responsible to complete the registration, is responsible in signing the IA or the Interface Agreement and will be the certification recipient of the notice of integration, NOI, or a notice of connection. A CEO does not have to register in the portal because this can be delegated to another person, the authorised officer.
So just returning back to our other example, a software business wanting to build a product that offers Support at Home APIs, Medicare Online and AIR API functionality that has staff located interstate to provide product support. So who registers there? That would be the business owner or sole trader. They are on the ASIC register therefore is responsible in completing the registration, is responsible for signing the Interface Agreement and will be the certification recipient of the notice of integration or the NOC which is the notice of connection. The authorised officer is responsible for the following as a minimum. One, accepting the Interface Agreement, ensuring their organisation abides by the terms and conditions of the Interface Agreement and its associated policies, maintaining up to date details for the organisation in the portal, and receiving product certification and production details for any application that successfully completes most of the integration testing.
So what can you do to help us or help assist with the registration process? Well here’s some tips. Organisations employing overseas developers will require an exemption from the relevant clauses in our Interface Agreement. All developers need to complete details on the registration form to apply for an exemption. Once you have applied for your exemption this will be provided to our cybersecurity team for assessment. We highly recommend that this section be completed in the registration form so it doesn’t cause you any unnecessary delay. Portal registrations that are incomplete or have incorrect information or are completed by a person who is not authorised to do so will take longer to process.
As part of the onboarding process, IDMO, our team, engage with all new organisations so that we can help you navigate through the process required to integrate with the agency systems. Post meeting IDMO will provide further information and contact points but please be advised these meetings with IDMO do not delay your access to the portal. Due to a high number of new organisations attempting to register in the portal timeframes for onboarding will take a little longer than normal. But please be patient with us. Portal registrations will be dealt with in the order that they are received and we are assuring aged care providers we are looking at those amongst other competing priorities for the developer liaison team.
Services Australia and Department of Health and Aged Care work in close partnership with each other. We are committed to ensuring that your software developer journey with us is as smooth as possible. Thank you for time and happy to take any questions.
Fay Flevaras:
Thank you so much Olivia. That was awesome. And I notice that you intentionally covered I think a lot of answers that we’ve had previous questions to. And so I really appreciate that. Of course the lights have gone off in my office so I’ve just changed a little bit. But let the show go on. Okay. So moving onto our next presentation. I’d like to introduce Ali and Chris who are going to quickly go through the Digital Transformation Impact Assessment research that we’re doing. Over to you guys.
Alithea Seemann:
[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Aged Care Digital Transformation Impact Assessment and Digital Maturity Research’, ‘Alithea Seemann’, ‘Director’, ‘Digital Services within Corporation Operations Group’, ‘Department of Health and Aged Care’, ‘Chris Bailie’, ‘Acting Director’, ‘Digital Services within Corporation Operations Group’, ‘Department of Health and Aged Care’, ‘Australian Government with Crest (logo)’, ‘Department of Health and Aged Care’]
Hi everyone. Got myself off mute. Lovely to be here. Thanks Fay. And yes. With the flurry of changes approaching on the 1st of July we know that providers are feeling the pressure. We’re doing a few things to help with that. So we’ve developed a series of practical I Can statements to help providers identify whether they have made the mission critical changes necessary to continue operations come the 1st of July.
In practice as a provider you should be able to refer to these statements and determine whether you can understand the principles of the new Act, review and update your services according to the new service list, review and update your organisation information, update funding and payment processes and information, update your business processes, training and IT systems to reflect the changes, communicate with existing participants to ensure they’re ready for the change, and work with your partners to ensure joint readiness. So focusing on these actions will ensure your organisation’s services and operations can continue smoothly after the Act implementation date.
We’ve also kicked off a piece of work to help determine the impacts of coming reform and to look at what is required to set them up confidently so that providers can say ‘I can’. We’re working with the Aged Care Transition Taskforce on a series of digital transformation impact assessments. We’ll investigate the impacts that reform and legislative changes are having on providers to help identify how they can better prepare for and adapt for changes like the new Aged Care Act. Ultimately we want to understand the common challenges felt by different segments of the sector whether they be large, medium, small, in metro, regional, rural locations, are digitally mature or still using paper-based systems. Also too we want to develop a playbook that organisations can use themselves to identify the impacts of legislative changes on them and determine what resources and supports would help address common adoption challenges.
We have had an open expression of interest that was launched in late February which has now closed and we’re forming a multidisciplinary team including representatives from Government, providers, vendors, assessors and other key stakeholders and this collaborative effort is focused on mapping out the organisation on operational impacts of the upcoming changes. As I said the EOI has now closed and we had approximately 100 organisations and individuals who volunteered to participate. So we’ve worked closely with the Aged Care Transition Taskforce subgroup to finalise the selection of participants from the open expression of interest to ensure a balanced representative group.
The next phase is underway this week. So we’re contacting selected providers and participants and sending out induction packs and pre-reading materials to ensure that everyone involved are well prepared for the upcoming workshops and deep dive sessions. So that’s all from me. I’ll hand to Chris for the update on the digital maturity research.
Chris Bailie:
Thank you Ali and hello everyone. I’m pleased to tell you that we’ve extended the expression of interest for our digital maturity self-assessment which is with providers. So the new close date is Sunday the 13th of April. A quick reminder of what the aged care provider self-assessment is about. It’s seeking to answer four key questions. What are the current levels of digital maturity for aged care providers? What are the key barriers and challenges inhibiting aged care providers from improving their digital maturity? What types of supports and enablers do providers need to help improve their digital maturity and what are the core elements of digital maturity for aged care providers that leads to success?
The self-assessment is a targeted engagement where we’re seeking one response per organisation. If you did register through the EOI but haven’t received an email this is because someone else in your organisation has been engaged. So perhaps speak with your CEO or CIO to learn what’s been happening. We’ve extended to ensure that we can create a comprehensive picture across the sector. That also means that we’ll have a small delay in issuing the benchmark reports to those who have completed the assessment and chosen not to remain anonymous. We’re thrilled to see that the overall response rate so far, 63%. That’s well over our target of 30%. So thank you very much for everyone that’s been participating. A summary of the initial findings is planned for the next Tech Talk.
To residential care providers we haven’t heard from as many of you as we’d hoped so part of the reason why we’ve extended this, but looking in particular if you can please take part to help understand the challenges that you’re facing. Again this QR code takes you to the expression of interest where you can register to get involved. If you participate you’ll receive a market report with your responses benchmarked against the overall results. And we’ll use what you tell us to help us develop policies and programs that support you. The self-assessment is free. It’s online and takes less than 30 minutes to complete.
Following our digital maturity survey for providers we’re opening up the floor for vendors to participate. We’re keen to hear your perspective on digital maturity and capability. Completing the survey provides us with useful feedback which will again help us to develop policies and programs to better support you. We’ll be launching the survey from mid to late April considering impacts of the Easter period. Again it’s free, online and it takes under 30 minutes to complete. Note it is the same QR code as the one we’ve just provided on the previous slide. It’s the same EOI but we’re able to distinguish between you. So again don’t miss out on your opportunity or chance to shape the sector’s digital transformation journey.
Fay Flevaras:
Thanks Ali and Chris. And I note that you guys are first time presenters at Tech Talk and so thank you. You did an excellent job. And calling out to all our residential aged care providers. It would be really great if you could participate in the maturity assessment. It’s really important that we get your perspective. And we’re looking forward to getting out there and working with the digital transformation impact assessment and hopefully we’ll be able to bring some insights back from that one as well.
Okay. So next up we have Services Australia with us. So I’d like to welcome Lezah and Jacqui to screen and I’ll hand over to you guys. And I think we’ll be doing a very small Q&A if time gives us before three o’clock. Excellent.
Lezah Rushton:
[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Support at Home’, ‘Lezah Rushton’, ‘Assistant Secretary’, ‘Assessment Home Care Transition Branch’, ‘Department of Health and Aged Care’, ‘Jacqui Houghton supported by Josh Bosschieter’, ‘Aged Care Projects Branch’, ‘Older Australians and Veterans Division’, ‘Services Australia’]
Thanks Fay. So I’m going to jump in first and then I will hand over to Jacqui. So good afternoon everybody. My name’s Lezah Rushton. I’m the Assistant Secretary for the Assessment and Home Care Transition Branch. I did come and talk to you late last year and provided you an overview of the Support at Home Program. This covered the key elements of the Support at Home Program, an update on implementation of the single assessment system which we completed in December, an overview of the Support at Home funding model and how payment arrangements will work.
Today I wanted to provide you with an update on the work we’ve been doing to support the sector with transitioning to the Support at Home Program. This includes some information on the Support at Home training approach, transitioning HCP participants to Support at Home and preparing your ICT systems. Then I’m going to hand over to Jacqui at Services Australia who will provide you with an overview of the claiming process.
So the Department along with Services Australia have developed a suite of resources for providers and software developers which are currently available on the Department’s website. In addition there are a number of technical resources available for software vendors and developers on the Services Australia Health Systems Developer Portal. In early March the Department released the Support at Home Program Manual that Fay referred to earlier in the session. The program manual is a guide designed to assist registered providers to understand and comply with the Support at Home Program rules, procedures and obligations.
There will be further iterations of the program manual released in late April to pick up additional policy clarifications that we’re working through as a result of the rules consultation. We’ll then release a final version of that program manual in June once the rules are finalised. The program manual is the source of truth for how Support at Home will be operationalised. If you haven’t already I encourage you all to access a copy and become familiar with the content. Whilst I did flag that we’re doing updates the current content reflects all of the fundamentals of the program and these are unlikely to be impacted by outcome of the rules consultation.
The Department has also developed the Support at Home Provider Transition Guide for existing Home Care Package providers to assist them with their transition to Support at Home. The purpose of this guide is to provide guidance and supporting information with the tasks providers need to complete in the lead up and post 1 July. It provides suggested timing for completion of transition activities and points you to where resources are available to support those activities. This document is the result of extensive consultation with Support at Home sector working groups so it’s been developed in consultation with providers and consumer advocacy groups.
Last week the Department released the Support at Home Pricing Guidance for both providers and participants as well as fact sheets on consumer protections for Support at Home pricing. The purpose of this guide is to outline what providers should consider when setting and publishing prices for the first year of Support at Home before the pricing caps are introduced in July 2026. To help you prepare your ICT systems the Department has released the Support at Home Claims and Payments Business Rules Guide in February. This product is an extract from our detailed business requirements and specifies the relevant business rules providers need to understand to prepare their IT systems, processes and people to manage claims for services. It provides the business context to any technical specifications that you might be consuming from Services Australia.
I might just ask the team to go to the next slide. Thank you. I thought it might just be helpful to provide you with visibility of our timeline of key transition activities. So this slide shows a very high level overview of the key activities and products the Department is providing over the coming months to support transition. As I’m sure you already know Services Australia has released API specifications for software vendors to work with providers on updating their ICT systems to make claims and receive payments under Support at Home. The Department has also released the grant opportunity to support providers with some funding towards transitioning ICT systems and training staff to work with those ICT changes.
From April the Department will be releasing further guidance on invoicing and payments as well as a range of training modules. As I’m sure you’re all aware many providers in the home care space do not currently use system to system integration with Services Australia to lodge claims. They instead use the provider portal. For these providers we are preparing separate guidance on the use of the portal for claiming which will be published shortly. Providers using the portal do not need to understand the API technical specifications. These are targeted to software vendors and developers working on system to system integration for claims and payments. The provider portal guidance material will provide step by step instructions for lodging claims using the various options available in the portal. And Jacqui will provide a little bit of further information on claims processing options shortly.
So just to clarify for you the provider portal and the developer portal are different services and so the developer portal is a specific portal for software vendors and developers. There were a couple of things in the chat which I might just pick up now. One was a question about are we going to be providing a sample of monthly statements. So I’ll pick up that question and we’ll consider that making sure that we’ve covered something either in the claims guidance or in the next iteration of the manual. So the answer to that is yes. We will provide you a sample of what you need to provide in that monthly statement through those artefacts that will be released shortly. And the other question I had was in relation to will caretaker delay the release of these materials. And the answer to that is we will continue on this trajectory through caretaker. These are considered administrative implementation processes under a program that already is endorsed both by Government and the Opposition.
So I might just go to the next slide. So shortly we’ll be delivering our training packages for Support at Home. The training is grouped into personas for key job roles within the Support at Home provider organisations. To guide providers in tailoring e-learning packages for their unique organisations an analysis of workforce has been conducted to understand and group similar job roles. So we’ve landed on six sort of learner groups which is guiding the development of our training material.
The learner groups are a collection of job roles within provider organisations grouped together by the relevant tasks and positions. For example the leadership learner group involves the job roles such as the CEO, board members, or frontline staff learner group includes job roles such as allied health, nurses, volunteers and support workers. Hybrid roles will also be taken into consideration when developing other learner groups. A hybrid role is when staff are responsible for multiple different tasks within the organisation and this is probably more applicable to smaller organisations.
For these scenarios staff that complete a hybrid role will be recommended to follow the manager learner pathway.
These learner groups have been overlaid with different training materials being developed for providers. The aim of this is to show the recommended training pathway for each learner group. The operations manager, care partner learner groups are recommended to complete all the Support at Home training. This is because their roles are required to have comprehensive understanding of Support at Home to complete their day to day tasks and support their staff. The recommendations will help providers focus their staff efforts on the knowledge that is most useful to their role and to manage the time impost for training. On average the program overview learning package which is recommended for all learners to complete should take between 60 to 90 minutes. The deep dive sessions which are to be split into three key sections, we expect each of these sections would take approximately 45 to 60 minutes to complete. The training is selfpaced and can be returned to at any time. So this will support frontline staff who may not be able to take sort of dedicated fixed periods to complete the training.
Just onto the next slide please. So we’ve received a number of enquiries about how to map Home Care Package budgets to Support at Home classifications and I note there was one in the questions today so hopefully this will cover that. So the answer is that Home Care Package funding levels will not map to any of the eight Support at Home ongoing classifications as the budget amounts just are different and they never will come into alignment.
So in our business requirements we’re suggesting this is managed as four additional classifications that we have been calling transitioned HCP classification levels one, two, three and four. So in essence we have the eight ongoing classifications which are the new classifications under Support at Home and they have a new budget level. We have the three short term classifications and there are four transitioned HCP classifications. Services Australia claiming services will be set up to receive claims for the four Home Care Package transition classifications, so against those four HCP budgets, and will manage the translation of the annual Home Care Package allocation to the appropriate quarterly budget amount for the Support at Home claiming. For all Home Care Package clients Services Australia will manage the setup of a quarterly budget based on their daily rate multiplied by the number of days within that quarter.
I might just call out here there was a question in the chat around end of life pathway and restorative care pathway and where is the service list for those particular pathways. The answer to that question really is that those short term classifications or pathways are short term pathways. The services that a participant receives under those budget classifications are from the Support at Home service list. So one service list covers the whole program. Those short term pathways determine the budget amount for a participant who is needs assessed as needing that pathway.
So just onto the last slide before I hand over to Jacqui. So to assist in the transition to Support at Home and to help you feel as prepared as possible we’re recommending that you read the Support at Home Program Manual to understand and comply with the Support at Home Program rules, procedures and obligations. If you’re a provider of a Home Care Package Program and you’re transitioning to Support at Home we recommend that you read the Support at Home Program Provider Transition Guide. We recommend that you read the Support at Home Claims and Payments Business Rules to understand the claims and payments processing under the program, and that you read the recently released Support at Home Pricing Guidance to help you set prices for the first year of the program.
So I’m now going to hand over to Jacqui.
Jacqui Houghton:
Thanks very much Lezah. And I wanted to start by just thanking the Department of Health and Aged Care for including us in the Tech Talks. This is a very collaborative effort in delivering Support at Home for 1 July so it’s really useful that we do it in a collective way.
So to that end I’ll just refresh you on the role Services Australia plays in the aged care ecosystem if you like. So Services Australia calculates consumer contributions and that’s based on a means assessment or income and asset assessment for participants. Services Australia also processes the subsidy and supplement payments to providers and obviously a very important part of the ecosystem. We also have aged care specialist officers in our service centre in terms of a face to face service to help people in accessing and navigating the aged care system which is a really popular service we provide here at Services Australia. And we also obviously build and manage the technology solutions that underpin those payments I talked about. So that’s sort of where we fit into the picture.
Lezah also mentioned claiming pathways. So if we could go to the next slide. We want to make it really clear for providers the claiming pathways available to them when interacting with Services Australia and claiming their payments. Obviously there is the API or B2G claiming for providers who are using integrated software solutions and I’ll talk about that in a little bit. But Lezah did mention the guide that we’re nearly ready to publish and we’re excited about in terms of aged care providers using our portal, and that’s where you sort of input data as a direct user of the portal to interact with Services Australia.
So we’ve been working collaboratively with Department of Health and Aged Care to provide a really simple but useful guide in terms of claiming through Support at Home. There’s a great one pager – and I expect we’ll have this at the end of the week I hope – a great one page that steps you through in a task card way how you determine the invoice amount for the care recipient, logging into the Aged Care Provider Portal, the three different ways you can enter or submit your invoice amounts and then remaining claim information that’s required, the checking and then the finalising of the claim. So there’s a great little one page task card for you on that. But that’s also supported by a pretty thorough user guide that will help with some of the detail attached to some of those processes. So we’ve sort of been able to create the five step process for claiming through the portal and we really hope that will reduce any confusion with providers in terms of their claiming channel and how that claiming channel will work from 1 July. So that as I said should be out by the end of the week. We are really pleased with that.
Next slide.
So APIs. So the B2G claiming channel. A few updates here. As Lezah mentioned the vendor testing environment was made available on Monday the 31st. So we worked very hard to hit that date and I’m very pleased that we did. Notice of integration will be available with Services Australia from the 1st of May, so in under a month’s time. We also have been running our webinars which from this week are moving to weekly webinars. So we acknowledge that it’s really important that we give regular information upfront now so our next webinar is this Friday the 4th and then from next week we’ll move back to every Wednesday. We just didn’t want to crowd today with the Tech Talk being on. And certainly we’ll continue to publish frequently asked questions as they arise.
I don’t think there’s anything else to say other than you can see there the list of APIs that we have released. And next slide.
The only other thing I wanted to mention, and I know it’s not necessarily techy, but Services Australia prepares in a whole range of ways, not just for our payment systems but for how we service the community and the preparation we do with our staff. So we have been working very hard over the last six to 12 months on our readiness, how we’ve looked to recruit, how we’re training our existing staff and bringing through and onboarding our new recruitment staff, how we’re prioritising our work in the agency and working really hard to make sure that we get any work on hand done and that we enter 1 July in a really good position for the new program. So lots of work happening inside our agency as well as externally with developers and providers.
I will leave it there. Thank you. I think we’re going to do a short Q&A.
Jessica Holmick:
Thank you so much Jacqui and Lezah. We are going to have a quick Q&A. We’ve got Fay on the screen as well. So we’re going to try to get through as many as we can noting you need to leave in just a few minutes. So this first one is for Lezah. It’s an anonymous question which is:
Q: Is Support at Home for both fully managed and self-managed going to be pretty much the same as the care management fee is capped to 10% for both?
Lezah Rushton:
So it sounds like a simple question. It’s not. There is a very detailed section of the program manual that covers care management. Care management applies regardless of whether you’re self-managed or not and care management is a flat 10% that is taken out of the budget across all classifications, all of the eight ongoing classifications. There is more work being done to provide some more detailed guidance. We have a sub-group of the Taskforce also looking at care management to again provide providers with a little bit more guidance around what they see as care management today under a Home Care Package Program which is not necessarily what you’re being funded for through the 10% care management in Support at Home. They’re slightly different probably iterations of how a role operates today and what the funding is around care management as a service. So please do refer to the detail that’s in the program manual and there will be more in the next release of the program manual.
Jessica Holmick:
Thanks so much Lezah. This next one’s for you Jacqui. The question is:
Q: When will NOI testing begin for Support at Home APIs and will Services Australia have enough resources available to complete NOI testing for all vendors which is needed before 1 July?
Jacqui Houghton:
Yeah. So the APIs are now available in the test environment for testing. So we are on there and then the integration can start from 1 May. Will we have enough testers? We’re all on a tight runway and we’re all working as hard as we can and preparing the best we can to move through that. So we’re working as hard as we can to make sure we get through that testing and that integration process.
Fay Flevaras:
And I’ll just echo Jacqui’s comments there. Everyone’s working really hard together. I noticed in the questions it said we need to know the information earlier than that. It’s there already. So get on and start working on it. And just try and do as much as you can early so it’s only the final step that you have to worry about. Don’t wait until the 1st of May and start the process. We ask for your help to kind of even that out as well. So thanks everyone.
Jessica Holmick:
Thanks Jacqui. Another one for you Lezah. So this one comes from Thea Francis. The question is:
Q: Will CHSP providers continue to use the current CHSP handbook until July 2027?
Lezah Rushton:
So there is an update being made to the CHSP program handbook so there are some changes to the CHSP program. There is a very detailed webinar that happened I think about two weeks ago on CHSP so that is available on the Department’s website. So please if you haven’t viewed that go and view the recording. There will be some guidance material released very shortly around some of those changes that happened in the CHSP Program largely to align to the new Aged Care Act and the registration of providers under CHSP. It won’t be covered in Support at Home. Different program. And we won’t be looking at how we roll CHSP in at least until 2027.
Jessica Holmick:
Thanks Lezah. One more for you.
Q: For current HCP clients transitioning to Support at Home will the claim funding source be HCP level one or will the funding source be the equivalent classification?
Lezah Rushton:
So I think I covered that in the presentation but essentially a Home Care Package client retains their same budget and they’ll be transitioned as a transitioned classification. So they don’t map to the Support at Home classifications.
Fay Flevaras:
I think we might call time there because it is just a little after 3:00 and I know both Jacqui and Lezah have other commitments that they need to go to. And I know that it’s a hot topic. But I was a bit remiss in the way I introduced that agenda Lezah. It was a joint effort there so thank you once again for joining us and thanks Jacqui as well. Really appreciate it. And we’ll take the rest of the questions away like we normally do. And so thank you very much.
All right. So we’ll move to our next item on the agenda which is Rob Day. He’s going to talk us through the regulatory model. So lots of information here folks today. So lucky we record these because you can go back and play them again and have another listen. So Rob over to you.
Rob Day:
[Visual of slide with text saying ‘New aged care regulatory model’, ‘Rob Day’, ‘Assistant Secretary’, ‘Harmonisation and Regulatory Strategy Branch’, ‘Department of Health and Aged Care’, ‘Australian Government with Crest (logo)’, ‘Department of Health and Aged Care’]
Thanks very much Fay. Hi everyone. I look after a team in the Department called Harmonisation and Regulatory Strategy. And doesn’t sound like a very Tech Talk kind of topic but one of the things that that entails is both the new structure for provider organisations that the new Aged Care Act provides and the process that we call deeming to take all provider entities from your current state through to the state under the new Act. And so today I’ll talk to you a little bit about the policy background, what does the new registration model look like, how this might change provider types, and also then that process to get you from current state to new state and what you as a provider organisation can do.
So under the new Aged Care Act we are moving towards a single registration model for aged care providers. So rather than having potentially separate records for your organisation’s responsibilities as a CHSP grant provider and a Home Care Package provider or a resi care provider, there will be a single registration under the Aged Care Act that covers all of those programs. And to manage that transition in an IT sense and a legal sense we’re using ABNs as the identifier or the aggregator. So where we have multiple records of an organisation sharing the same ABN we will as part of this transition set that up in GPMS and legally under the new Aged Care Act as a single registered provider. The process is – yes. I should say I’m conscious there will be situations where we have related organisations that have multiple ABNs. The deeming process won’t change that. That will be a choice for you and your organisation about whether you see benefit in amalgamating those organisations to take advantage of some of the structure of the new regulatory model. That’s not something you need to do now. That’s something you’ll be able to do after the new Act starts as well.
Sorry to my slide sharer. I think we can move on to the next slide after that. This gives you a little bit of a demonstration of how some of those programs will come together for the purposes of the new Act. I think it’s worth recognising here that we continue to have grant funded programs like CHSP recognised as specialist aged care programs as well as the coming together of home care programs. Also worth calling out when I’m talking about transitioning providers, deeming providers, that’s only about current approved providers and providers that are delivering services under a Grant Agreement. Other organisations that are working in the aged care space, organisations that entirely subcontract to approved providers won’t be deemed into the new Act, but they’ll continue to have a role and that role is known as an associated provider under the new Act.
And so just wanted to call out what this deeming thing is that we’re talking about. Deeming is a legal process. It happens under the Transitional and Consequential Amendment Act and it’s the way in a legal sense we translate an organisation that is currently an approved provider or currently a grant recipient delivering CHSP or NATSIFAC or one of our other grant funded programs and give them the status of a registered provider under the Aged Care Act. That happens by operation of law at midnight on the 1st of July. So it’s sort of an instantaneous objective process. But there is a lead up that we’re working through and we’re doing that in stages so that we can get both that legal process and the IT articulation of that change as right as we possibly can. We started that staged process late last year when we reached out to Government funded providers for what we called a deeming validation process. We engaged there about who is the best contact in your organisation to talk about these changes and also then provided an initial view of we think these are the service types you’re already delivering. This is what it would look like in terms of transition to the registration categories of the new Aged Care Act.
The next step which we began yesterday is what’s called provider registration preview. And that’s an opportunity to see an even more detailed view of what that possible registration will look like under the new Act. And we can probably move forward to the next slide. Thank you. So the registration preview is going to allow all aged care providers, whether you’re doing resi care, home care, CHSP, NATSIFAC, to confirm the registration details, so the organisational identity, the ABN, what are the service types that you’re offering, what does that mean in terms of registration categories, what are the aged care homes, what are the home care services that are linked to that registration. And seeing that information I think is really important both for you and for us. For us it tells us that the algorithms that we’re running behind the scenes to do that deeming process work and for you as provider entities it gives you that extra layer of detail so that you can start to prepare for what are the changes that are coming your way on the 1st of July.
I should say that all of this data translation is happening in the Government Provider Management System. So those of you who are already operating in home care and resi care will be very familiar with that system. Those of you that are delivering just CHSP or just NATSIFAC will possibly be choosing CHSP for the first time but in both cases once we get to the 1st of July GPMS is going to become that single source of truth for your organisational identity in terms of which entity we regulate, which entity we fund to deliver aged care services.
So here’s the next slide which has got some key dates around the preview process. Yesterday we sent out just over 1,300 emails to aged care providers with that preview document attached.
We also sent out late yesterday and this morning another 700 emails to providers where we needed to double check that we had the right contact to have that conversation with. And so your organisation should have been contacted in one of those two ways, going to the nominated contact that we have either in GPMS or in your Grant Funding Agreement.
So in terms of what is coming your way, for those 1,300 organisations you’ll have received a PDF attachment from noreply@communications.health.gov.au. It will have the subject line that you see on the screen there, ‘For review. A preview of your proposed registration information and registration categories’. We really recommend that the person in the organisation that gets that preview shares it around the organisation with HR, with legal, with IT, so that all parts of the organisation can double check that that looks right to them and know what’s coming their way.
If the information is correct then you don’t have to do anything. We’ll keep working. We’ll know that information is right and we’ll keep working towards deeming on the 1st of July. If there’s information that you need to change then that can be done and it can be done through business as usual processes. So through the manage your organisation tile in GPMS, through your Grant Funding Agreement manager if that’s the type of service that you’re offering. And we need to know that information by 5:00pm on the 1st of June so that we can get that ready in time.
If you’re one of the 700 organisations that we need to double check contact details you will have received the email from my team’s email box directly which is agedcareregmodel@health.gov.au and as soon as you write back to us confirming the right contact you’ll get that same PDF. We’ve got it ready to go for you.
Let’s skip ahead two slides just in the interests of time. So the one about what can you do to prepare. Thank you very much. So I think the really critical thing in terms of deeming is that we’ll use the information that we hold either in GPMS or in your Grant Funding Agreement to do that translation both in a legal sense and in an IT system sense from current state to future state. And so the more accurate that information is the smoother that process will be for all of us. And so a real plug to jump into GPMS, use the manage your organisation tile to update information or to reach out to your Grant Funding Agreement manager to update any details that you see in preview that aren’t quite right.
And in both of those – let’s skip along to the next slide thank you – you can always reach out to my team directly at that email, agedcareregmodel@health.gov.au if you’ve got any questions, if there’s something that’s not right in your preview, that you’re not quite sure where to go to to progress it, and a range of other links on that page both in terms of some more information that we’ll keep updating in terms of GPMS and how that’s shaping up for the new Aged Care Act but also about the preview process and the deeming process. So please reach out for help if you need to but look forward to engaging with you through preview and the deeming process. Thanks very much.
Fay Flevaras:
[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Q&A’, ‘Ask your questions on Teams, using the Q&A tab’, ‘If you see a question you like, vote it up!’, ‘Australian Government with Crest (logo)’, ‘Department of Health and Aged Care’]
Awesome Rob. So thank you so much for that. Lots of good information there. I can’t help but think that the future is now. We’re talking about 1st of July but actually it’s all happening now. So really exciting for people to get in there, have a look at their information, make sure that we’ve got it right, and if there’s anything that needs to be changed and fixed that they work with us now over the next couple of months to get that right.
So I think we’re going to go into a little bit of a Q&A. Do we have Jess with us, and we’re going to bring up some of the others who have spoken today. I’ll just ask for the team to take down the Q&A slide so we’ve got a nice lot of room for the rest of us to be there. Excellent. So Jess over to you.
Jessica Holmick:
Questions. Okay. So we do have people to stage. Rob this one’s for you. The question is:
Q: Has the process for applying as a new provider changed? If so when will organisations be able to apply to become a new provider and when is the updated application form expected to be available?
So that’s an anonymous question that’s been raised.
Rob Day:
Yeah. Thanks Jess. So there will be a new process from the 1st of July. If you’re already delivering services you don’t need to worry about this. That’s what the deeming process is for. But if you’re an organisation wanting to come into the system for the first time there will be that process. You can’t legally make an application under the new Act until the new Act starts on the 1st of July. My understanding is the Quality and Safety Commission are planning to release the form and the information about how those applications will be processed a little bit later this month and they’re holding a webinar on the registration process on the 15th of April if you want some more detail.
Jessica Holmick:
Amazing. Thanks for that Rob. While I’ve got you one more for you.
Q: If the portal has us registered under an alternative ABN how do we move it to the appropriate ABN?
Rob Day:
That’s a really interesting question. I think the first thing is - - -
Kate:
Sorry. I thought you were talking about the Health Systems Developer Portal ABN issue and I was like I can help you out with that.
Jessica Holmick:
All good.
Rob Day:
So sorry. That might be an interesting question. If we’re talking about how GPMS is reflected in an organisation or how we show you an organisation status in the preview reach out and let us know that you think it’s not correct and we’ll map out that process for you. We can’t go about legally changing the structure of organisations through this process but if it’s a case of we’ve got the wrong ABN there in the record already let us know and we’ll see what we can do to fix it for you.
Jessica Holmick:
Wonderful. Thank you so much Rob. This one is for you Kate so I’ll throw to you. So Elizabeth Collins asks the question.
Q: If we already have PRODA registration via NDIS do we still have to register again for this?
Kate:
Yep. This one’s an easy one for you guys. So a PRODA is registered to either your organisation or to a person and it’s about us knowing who you are. So if you already have one that will be fine as long as the organisation is the same.
Jessica Holmick:
Okay. Great. While I’ve got you I’ll ask you another one Kate. So this one’s an anonymous one.
Q: If we are not a software developer and if we are not developing our own in-house software – I think they’re just seeking clarification that they don’t need to know anything. I guess that’s behind the developer portal is the way it’s been written.
Kate:
That’s pretty much the case. I mean with a lot of these the answer is you guys are using a software developer to connect anyway so go back to them, reach out to them if you need to, but generally you won’t need to know anything about the Health Systems Developer Portal. Your software developer will do it for you.
Jessica Holmick:
Wonderful. And one final one for you Kate. So this one’s also anonymous.
Q: The portal on APIs for testing are only for software developers. How can aged care providers test their implemented systems against the APIs to ensure that our implementation is correctly functioning?
So I think you’ve answered that in your previous question, that your service provider should be doing that on your behalf.
Kate:
Yeah. Same answer for that one.
Jessica Holmick:
All right. Wonderful. Thank you so much Kate. I’ve got one for you Fay. There’s a question of:
Q: Will there be an API for reporting on the QFR?
Fay Flevaras:
That is one that we have identified in the upcoming roadmap but we do not have a confirmed implementation date on that one. But yes. We did an activity last year where we asked the sector what kind of APIs do you think you would want and that was definitely a hot topic one and so it is on the list. We’re just sorting out what the next lot of APIs look like and when we’ll be delivering and we’ll probably get you those post caretaker period.
Jessica Holmick:
Thanks Fay. This one’s for you Chris. So this one comes from Mark Render. He asks:
Q: Is there an intention to provide a comparison and an understanding of what our maturity is and compares against other businesses in this space as we completed this but have seen nothing further?
So this is in relation to the digital maturity assessment.
Chris Bailie:
Yep. Thanks Mark for the question. Yes the intention is that individual benchmark reports will be provided. With the extension of the EOI and the close date now being the 13th of April those reports we’re targeting sort of mid-May. We just need time to analyse the data that’s come in to be able to process those reports. So targeting mid-May to get those reports out to you.
Fay Flevaras:
The only thing is – and I’m interpreting the question a little bit different. So there’s us as a sector, as an aged care sector, and I’m wondering if the question was was there an intention to take the benchmark maturity that we’ve identified here and assess what does good digital look like in other sectors as well. So I’ve interpreted the question that way. We’ll take that away and have a think about it and see if there’s anything that we can use there as well. But thanks for the question.
Jessica Holmick:
Thanks Fay. While I’ve got Rob on the call there’s one that’s been asked by Jill Bernard. The question is:
Q: Who should we contact if we didn’t receive the preview of proposed registration and registration categories email?
Rob Day:
Yeah. Thanks Jess. Thanks Jill. So I think it’s worth doing a quick check around your organisation first. We will have sent that to, in this priority order, the nominated contact when we did the deeming validation survey last year and then the identified contact point either in GPMS or in your Grant Funding Agreement. So worth asking around within your organisation who that might be. If you’ve done that and you can’t find it then email my team which is that agedcareregmodel@health.gov.au email address and we’ll be able to do a search and find out who we sent it to in your organisation.
Jessica Holmick:
Wonderful. Thank you so much Rob. There was a question that was for Lezah and she has provided this but I might just answer this again on her behalf. So this question comes from Jane Floyd. The question was:
Q: When will training for providers start? Providers will need at least months lead time to train staff.
And as per Lezah’s response they are targeting to have the training released at the end of April.
There’s another question here from Sarah Gosling.
Q: Will the slides be circulated afterwards?
So yes. Confirming that the presentation deck of this presentation as well as the recording does get published onto the Health website usually two to three weeks after the event. So that will be available.
The other question that’s come in from I think Sorna Devadis. The question is:
Q: Hi. How do we become a partner in the digital strategy program?
I’m making an assumption that you’re either talking about the digital transformation impact assessment or the digital transformation sector partners. So if it’s the sector partners a shameless plug here. You just need to send us an email. So that’s dtsectorpartners@health.gov.au and the team will be more than happy to address that. Otherwise I guess the expression of interest for the impact assessment has currently closed as per Ali’s update and those successful I guess expressions of interest will be contacted soon.
Fay Flevaras:
Jess just on that one, and Ali you might want to elaborate, our intention is to share the playbook I believe with the audience. So just because you didn’t make it as one of those EOI selected – do you want to just elaborate there a bit?
Alithea Seemann:
Yeah. A hundred percent. So with the impact assessment work the point of it is for us to understand more about how the sector will be impacted so that we can then provide resources to help people conduct an assessment on themselves about the impacts and what they might need to do next to prepare themselves. So we want to share how we’re working and the methodology that we’re following so that even if you’re not part of this tight group that we’re working with that you can apply the learnings from that yourselves and follow a similar process. And so we do want to put that on the website at some point in time. We’re not quite sure what it will look like because we haven’t done the work yet to really get into the detail. But once it’s been tested with that smaller group yes we do want to share that with everyone.
Fay Flevaras:
Yep. So we’re hoping that the resources that we’ve developed will be published and then you guys can do your own self-impact assessment. This is something that most organisations should be doing anyway but we recognise that maybe not everyone has the skills internally to be able to do an impact assessment. And so that’s why we offered to do this initiative. It’s about you guys and your operations. It’s not about Government and how you talk to Government. This is a very new way of assisting in that sense. And so it is a little bit of an innovation and an experiment and so we’ll see how we go. But once we’ve tested those materials and we think they’re good we’ll publish it out and then you guys can get them and use them yourselves.
Jessica Holmick:
Wonderful. I’ve got another one here for Kate. It’s an interesting one. The question is:
Q: Have you considered just publishing the API documentation to GitHub? This would allow the documents to be updated faster instead of having to wait months for updates to the documents.
Kate:
I mean the answer is I absolutely love the idea of being able to get things out faster and quickly but security is a very high bar for us and that just won’t pass muster.
Fay Flevaras:
No. And I echo Kate’s thoughts there. Especially some of these APIs. You’ll see a distinction with the APIs that we might publish within the Department on B2G which are more reporting APIs which is where the information goes one way. But the APIs that Services Australia has that Kate’s talking about is a bit two way and it’s around personal and identifiable information, content and payments. And so just keeping a very high security and cyber posture there around who has access to the information so we know who’s registered and how it’s being used.
Kate:
And it’s very important to us that people accessing our APIs have signed the Interface Agreement as well and agree to abide by it.
Fay Flevaras:
Yep. Excellent. Thanks. Last question Jess maybe.
Jessica Holmick:
Yeah. I think probably just a couple of comments before we close out. So there was a question around:
Q: Can all these questions in the chat please be answered and put out in a FAQ document as you will not get through them all? And there are a lot of good questions that need appropriate answers.
So Fay I don’t know if you want to comment on that. We are going through a process.
Fay Flevaras:
Yeah. We are going through a process. We understand there’s a heightened list of questions coming through. Some of the questions though we have already answered in the existing resources and so this is why we do encourage everyone to know what the existing resources are and where they can find them and to please have a read. There are some questions that are legitimately not in the resources at this point in time so those ones we will make an effort to answer in that sense. And we keep pushing the information back to where the source of truth is so we don’t end up with a whole lot of Q&As that cover content that can be found everywhere else. So we are grouping them up thematically as well. So you may not see an answer exactly against the question you’ve provided because otherwise we’ll be repeating ourselves a little bit from different forums. But yes. We do use all the questions to make sure that we’re covering the content and that we haven’t missed anything in our resources. So hopefully that helps folks.
And I think that might be time. Excellent.
Jessica Holmick:
I think it is too.
Fay Flevaras:
So thank you all very much for those who are on the panel. Thanks Rob and Kate for joining us, and Ali, Chris. I think we received some really excellent questions. Our next Tech Talk is scheduled Wednesday the 7th of May so please mark that down in your diaries. Any agenda items or topics you’d like to see please let us know. You can pop it into the survey that we will send you post this event in a moment. And the QR code is on the screen for that now if you’d like to do it while I still have your attention.
As always a reminder this is an open forum and we love the diversity of views and opinions we see at these Tech Talks. And if you know others with an interest in the kind of topics we’re covering here please share the link to our website. And with that I’d like to then thank you all. It’s been lovely to have you with us again and we hope you found the session insightful. To our sector partners in the audience today we’ll see you tomorrow. And to everyone out there please don’t hesitate to contact us. Have a wonderful afternoon and we look forward to seeing you at our next Tech Talk. Thank you so much.
[Closing visual of slide with text saying ‘Tech Talk post-event survey’, with QR code, ‘health.gov.au/tech-talk-webinars’, with QR code, ‘Thank you!’, ‘Australian Government with Crest (logo)’, ‘Department of Health and Aged Care’, ‘DTDDEngagementOffice@health.gov.au’]
[End of Transcript]
Speakers:
- Fay Flevaras – Department of Health and Aged Care
- Olivia Trembath – Services Australia
- Declan Lutekina – Services Australia
- Alithea Seemann – Department of Health and Aged Care
- Chris Bailie – Department of Health and Aged Care
- Lezah Rushton – Department of Health and Aged Care
- Jacqui Houghton – Services Australia
- Rob Day – Department of Health and Aged Care