LANCASHIRE, Claire 0:06
Good morning everyone. Thanks for those joining. We'll just wait for one moment and then we'll get started.
Starting to see numbers push up to around that 100 mark, so we might make a start. Hello and a warm welcome to everyone joining us here today for our 6th session. So we've been doing this now for 12 weeks. Thanks for those that have been on the journey to date. For those that don't know me, I'm Claire LANCASHIRE and my team leads on engagement and communications to support the implementation of Support at Home and the ongoing refinements and embedding of the programme. Before we commence, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians on the land that we're meeting today and pay respects to elders past, present and emerging. For me, I'm meeting on the lands of the Wurundjeri and acknowledge their role in the continuing culture that they play in the life of the city in this region.
I'm not sure if our slides are toggling through, but for those who are joining for the very first time, just in terms of some housekeeping, this is number six in a series of fortnightly sessions around the personal care changes. And what we're really focusing on is the operational matters, readiness for providers, for participants and for the people that you work with. It is not about changing policy or talking about broader changes to the Support at Home programme.
For those that have been on this journey with us, though, we're finding that this is a really great way to engage with providers frequently, but also for us to engage and have a conversation on a fortnightly basis. So we really are starting to turn our minds as we're getting closer to October, about how we could utilise these sessions to support other things. So the things kind of top of mind for our team are thinking about how we could utilise these sessions as we prepare for the extension of the end of life pathway into next year. But also what are some other, and again, want for better word, pain points that you're experiencing in the programme that would benefit from provider drop-in sessions like this.
So you might start to see some additional invites come through for those as well. Team, if we could just jump to the kind of recap from last time. So really a lot of our efforts in the last few sessions have been about supporting you to understand the range of materials that we've released around readiness. So the checklist, communications kits and the like, and talking through the results of our surveys, and a big thanks to those that participated in that. It was really an important way for us to understand what you needed. And I think the last session really was an opportunity to go page by page, led by Penny, to talk through some of those communications kits so that you really understood the range of supports in there from emails and other materials that you could tailor into your existing products. We're going to change tack today and have a look through some of the materials from a lens of what are the situations that we'd like to avoid. Again, just in terms of housekeeping, we might have Penny run through the items and then open up for questions and comments. I think the question and answer is enabled. And I think this might be actually our first time that we're going to record the session. So I should note that up front that we will be recording and we'll have made some adjustments on our web pages too, just to notify people of that. We understand that sometimes Thursday mornings is not the best time for all of the sector and so it's handy to be able to return to these. I think we're also thinking about whether we need to record an overarching session, if you like, for anyone who hasn't been joining across the way. So I might now hand over to Penny to take us through and you'll hear from me.
As we jump back into the Q&A and close up for the session, but over to you, Penny.
WARD, Penelope 4:53
Thanks, Claire, and welcome everybody. Great to see good numbers again today. So during today's session, I'll be taking you through the personal care contribution change user journey. And the user journey that I'll be taking you through is the older person or supporter.
And so what is a user journey? Well, it's not a process map. It's a way of describing and visualising the intended participant experience before, during, and after implementation of the personal care contribution change. And in today's session, I'll be focusing on critical scenarios that providers should actively plan for and to avoid. And these scenarios that we'll be stepping you through have been tested with representatives from peak bodies and sector organisations to validate those assumptions and those real world risks that are ahead of us on 1 October.
And so how do providers use a user journey? So you can use it alongside the provider readiness checklist, which is a resource that's already been provided. It's a great discussion tool that you can take to leadership teams, operational ICT teams, workforce leads, care managers and frontline staff, and you'll see the utility as we go through this. And you can start to test whether your current implementation activities for your organisation specifically are addressing each of these critical scenarios. And you can start to also consider whether your participant communications, staff training, documentation, billing arrangements and system changes is sufficient to avoid the risks that we'll be highlighting today. And so again, the journey that we'll be stepping you through this entire meeting pack will be made available on our website and I'll show you how to access that at the end of the session. And like I said, you've already got the HTML version of the provider readiness checklist, you've got the playbook, and you've got the accompanying resources. So it all comes together really nicely. So I might just go to the next slide. For those, just to recap, who've never worked with a user journey before, designed to share that view of the participant experience, raise awareness of those critical participant provider scenarios, and it helps to reinforce that understanding of the change leading up to and post 1 October, and can inform targeted guidance and readiness activities. Now, I'd also ask you to start to think about what we've been producing over the last couple of months, what's available to you now. And as I'm taking you through some of these scenarios, what might be missing for you? What might you need from us to help support your particular organisation and be really keen to see if there's some common themes across provider organisations. Now, you may not know that now, and so you may not be or you may not be willing to drop it into the chat, but I'll come to a way which you can contact us and you can reach out and you can provide that information to us. So we might move into the user journey itself.
So what you're seeing on the screen here is a staged approach for the participant experience, and that's the older person. Down across the top part of the page, we've got some major stages, which is prepare for the change, understand the change, receive updated documents. You've got the 1 October go live, then you've got the first invoice in the participant statement, the monthly statement, and then you've got ongoing care and review. Now, down the left hand side, you'll see the ideal participant experience. So we'll step through that exactly. We'll have the various touch points that a participant might have with your organisation. We've also got the artefacts and information that your organisation or the department may be providing. And then we've got 12 critical scenarios to avoid, and we'll go through those one at a time. And then some of the, down the bottom, we've got the key participant questions. So what you might start to be hearing from your participants as we're moving along those, along the eight weeks leading up to 1 October and beyond. So we'll start with stage one, prepare for the change. And so the intended participant outcome, and this is what providers should be doing now, is that participants are aware the change is coming and they know where to get information. And so for this particular stage, it's really important, the critical scenarios to avoid, is that frontline staff may not already, may not be able to explain the change consistently. And also some participants, including culturally and linguistically diverse and First Nations participants or vulnerable participants, may not understand the change or how it affects them.
And so these scenarios are really important. If a participant receives unclear or inaccessible information at the start of the change journey, the implementation, this misunderstanding can persist throughout the implementation period and beyond. Confidence in communications may be reduced and participants may seek information from other sources and that can potentially result in conflicting advice. And as a result, inquiries and complaints may increase before go live. And so when we turn our attention to the resources that can help you avoid this, in the provider readiness checklist, the major theme is theme number one, which is understand, build awareness and brief your stakeholders. And so that's about understanding and communicating the change, subscribing to updates from the department and communicating these changes and updates, attending information sessions much like what we've got here as well.
And then also starting to prepare your participants. That's the second theme. So prioritising your participant outreach if you haven't done so already. And like I said, communicating the change to all participants. Now, we've spoken about this before. There's the stakeholder kit including for providers, including the key messages,
We've got frequently asked questions. There's an e-mail template that can be sent out to participants. And very soon, we're hoping in about a week and a half, we'll also have an easy read within that template document as well that you can use for your organisation. We've also got the My Aged Care participant information.
So there's plenty of information available on the My Aged Care website and of course the department's own personal care contribution change provider web pages and resources. And again, we'll come to those and I'll keep talking about those as we move through. Okay, so the second stage, which is understand change. And so the intended participant outcome for this stage is that participants understand what's changing, what is not changing and what it means for them. And so the critical scenarios to avoid for this stage is that the participant receives conflicting information about the change, reducing their confidence in their understanding of the change. And also the participant believes approval, eligibility or funding limits no longer apply and expects services beyond approved care arrangements. And so this is really important and it matters because if participants don't understand the scope of the change, their expectations about services may become unrealistic; participants may assume additional services are automatically available. And this misunderstanding may create dissatisfaction later when funding, approval or eligibility limits still apply. And so again, pointing back to the provider readiness checklist is about understanding and building awareness and briefing your stakeholders, making sure your participants are prepared. And by now, you should be engaging with participants so that they understand the change, discussing their care plans, and also discussing their budgets where applicable as well.
We'll move on to stage 3, which is receive updated documents. So for this, the intended participant outcome for this stage is that the participants are confident that care arrangements and the documentation that supports it accurately reflect any changes.
And so the critical scenario to avoid here is that a participant receives conflicting information across their care documentation, such as care plans, budgets, and for some providers, service agreements and other documentation. And this is really important for participants because documentation is often viewed by participants as that single source of truth. And if the documentation is inconsistent and inconsistent with conversations, then again, that confidence in provider advice may be reduced. Participants may question billing outcomes and that this can result in unnecessary follow up. It could be rework, complaints may be raised, and there's additional pressure placed on care partners, contact centres, and escalation pathways to other government agencies as well. And so again, the provider readiness checklist can really support you.
By this stage, you should be looking at individual participant budgets, reviewing and updating service agreements if they require a change. Not every provider will need to do that, but we've flagged that because we recognise some will. And now also starting to prepare your organisation and workforce. So that is theme three of the provider readiness checklist. So starting to look at the documentation and templates that you're using and ensuring alignment across care plans, service agreements, billings, and any other artefacts that have these touch points. Okay, now let's turn our attention to the 4th stage, which is the 1st of October go live. And so the intended participant outcome is that participants continue to receive their as planned and the change does not disrupt their services. So the critical scenario to avoid here is that a participant is charged a personal contribution after 1 October.
And this really matters. This is the highest compliance risk. Incorrect charging may result in complaints, participant distress, refunds, remediation activities, and potentially reputational impacts for providers and also the programme as well.
So this is really important, this scenario. You really need to avoid this one and making sure that you can avoid this by referring to the provider readiness checklist. Theme #4 will help you prepare your ICT and your systems, confirming the system changes, monitoring ICT readiness and vendor readiness and related any related risks especially if you're working with the software vendor, so working really closely with your teams, updating system configuration, updating and testing the connected systems and outputs before you go live, and confirming everything is ready before you go live. And then, of course, applying the change. So applying the new contribution settings from 1 October. So that takes us into theme number number 5 and we've got the advice, the HTML provider readiness checklist is there. We've got the post 1 October guidance that is already, that was released originally, it's there for you. So you can start to plan for that now as well.
And so let's now turn our attention. We're well and truly into 1 October and beyond. Stage 5 is where the first invoice or the monthly statement is issued and the intended participant outcome is that participants understand their monthly statement, charges and all contributions that apply. And the critical scenarios to avoid here is that the participant believes the change applies to services delivered before 1 October and also participant does not understand why charges still appear after 1 October. Now this is important because this is where the implementation and success becomes visible. Even if providers have implemented the change correctly, there could be confusion about statements, there could be historic charges and the change on 1 October can drive inquiries and disputes. So participants may misunderstand how pre and post 1 October charges are reflected on monthly statements. Participants may also believe that costs for services delivered before 1 October should be removed and particularly where a service is delivered before and after 1 October appear on the same monthly statement. Now, this is going to be quite a reality for a lot of providers, a lot of participants. And participants may start to dispute invoices or monthly statements. And again, that could increase inquiries to providers, Services Australia and the department. And so this billing confusion could continue for weeks or months if it's not addressed early. And so providers should explain now how the change applies from 1 October and how earlier services delivered pre 1 October and how charges might appear on those monthly statements.
So this is all part of understanding the change and briefing your stakeholders and your participants and making sure they understand pre and post 1 October changes. Okay, so we'll move our attention now to the final stage, which is, sorry, I'll go back a little bit. In terms of the provider readiness checklist to support you, theme #3 calls out specifically updating your billing and finance processes, and then applying the change, which is theme number 5 and providing some guidance for you in that checklist of how to manage participant queries, making sure you've got that really well set up and ready to go. And then also theme number six, which is resolve and monitor. So making sure you've got something in place to monitor queries around billing, claiming, and any reporting as well. And so now we'll turn our attention to stage number six, which is ongoing care and review. And so the intended participant outcome for this stage is that participants receive the care they need and they can continue to make informed decisions about their services.
And so the critical scenarios to avoid in this stage are the participant does not understand how the change affects costs, services or available funding. A participant cannot understand why some services in the same visit attract a contribution and others don't. And a participant expects additional services but does not have available funding and participants expect additional services but provider capacity cannot meet the demand. Now, we've flagged early on there could be an uptick or an increase in demand for services as a result of this change. And so this really matters. These are the long-term implementation risks. So if not addressed, participants may continue avoiding personal care because of cost misconceptions. They may misunderstand available funding and how to use it, or they may expect additional services that may not be able to be delivered. And this can result in dissatisfaction, and this may grow after implementation, even where providers have technically implemented the change correctly. So it's about building that understanding across this whole change implementation with participants. And providers should ensure that care plans, budgets, service agreements and records of participant discussions along this timeline and beyond remain current and they accurately reflect those discussions and decisions that are made around the services, funding and a participants care needs. And so this supports participants understanding ongoing service delivery, claiming activities for providers and compliance with documentation and evidence requirements under the Support at Home programme, which is detailed in the manual. We'll make sure we provide that link for you as well. And so turn your attention back to the provider readiness checklist. So back to theme number two, which is prepare your participants, discuss the care plans, plan for changes in participant demand, plan for demand changes. And then theme number three, which is prepare your organisation and workforce. Training your staff and all staff. There is a lot of information available out there. The Support at Home training modules are there. There is a lot of information that we've provided as part of these resources to support operational staff, explain to executive and also frontline staff as well. And so preparing your staff for this transition so that everybody knows what to do leading up to and post 1 October as well. And then also, as mentioned before, making sure that you've got mechanisms in place to resolve and monitor any queries, monitor demand and service delivery, resolve any outstanding issues, and also conducting a post-implementation review.
So in closing, this user journey is available for you as part of this pack. It's not intended to predict every possible issue. It highlights the participant and provider scenarios most likely to impact successful implementation. And again, we've tested these scenarios with our peak representative group, and the department regularly engages with them and together we work on practical ways for providers to review the implementation activities, validate readiness and identify any gaps leading up to and post 1 October. And so if there's something that you're thinking of for your organisation or you're aware of that should be included in here, we would love to hear from you. You can either pop it in the chat, you can put up your hand and have a chat, or again, you can e-mail us or contact us to discuss in more detail or perhaps to be included as well.
And so again, you should use the journey alongside the provider readiness checklist and confirm that your communications, workforce readiness, participant documentation, ICT, billing processes and systems and ongoing monitoring activities are addressing and working to prevent these scenarios. So I might just pause there for a moment before I go into and flag again the support resources. So just to see if anyone's got any questions on the call.
LANCASHIRE, Claire 24:52
Penny, I'm not sure if we've had a legacy hand for a while, but I think there's an attendee, Jasmine, had a question potentially from the beginning or might be relating to this stuff here.
WARD, Penelope 25:01
Go ahead, Jasmine, if you are still here.
Feel free to use the chat if, by some reason, you can't speak.
We've got that locked down.
No.
All right, well, what we might do, while everybody is thinking, what we'll do is I'll step the audience through the resources and how to get support. So we might just move, we'll come back to the Q&A because Claire and I will remain on the call as well, towards the end, so we'll make ourselves available.
What you're seeing on the screen here is how you can get support. Now, this is included in the provider readiness checklist playbook, but we thought it was worth mentioning here today. So for implementation support, you can e-mail our team directly, which is the SaH.implementation@health.gov.au. So that's the Support at Home Implementation and we would be happy to answer your questions and queries. You can also send an e-mail to access the Support at Home Community of Practice. If you have not done that already, please jump in. We post in there regularly. We flag resources. We also give an early update in terms of what topics that we might be discussing in upcoming provider sessions. And again, you can subscribe to the Your Aged Care Updates. We'll make sure you've got the link in their resources, so you know how to do that and make sure you get onto the mailing list. And have this one in your back pocket and so you know you should have it already but make sure you do for any support with claiming contact the Services Australia Aged Care Provider line with the number that you're seeing there on the screen.
And so we'll move into the next slide. We showed this slide last time. It's really useful. I won't go through it again but just want to remind those that are on the call that this slide is available, a good resource at a glance to show various people in your organisation the implementation timeline.
And then on our next slide, I'm going to keep talking about it, which is the provider readiness checklist. We'll make sure that the link to the HTML page is in the chat, or you can scan the QR code on the screen to access the resources, the full checklist.
You've also got the playbook and the stakeholder kit for providers. That's that templated kit that's both in PDF and Word document. So you can tailor that to your organisation. And as mentioned, we will be adding an easy read in there as well. So that will be really useful for you.
And then finally, our final slide that I'd like to share with you today, the collection of resources, which is for those of you who don't know, after each session here, we have the slide pack ready for you to download. There is a dedicated page, a collection of resources, and you can scan the QR code. We'll make sure you've got the link there in there as well. Today's recording will also be made available as part of this collection and future sessions as well. And also just to highlight last session's deck is there, and we did a walkthrough of where providers should be now in terms of their implementation progress. So that's all I wanted to provide for the group here today, but I think we might go back to the questions. I can't quite see everything that's on the screen, so I might need a little bit of help there.
LANCASHIRE, Claire 29:07
Penny, I might jump in and help you just looking through the chat. So, we've had some comments from Ronelle and then we might actually go to Services Australia. I know Daron was joining us on the call today just to talk about some of the issues that providers are expecting, so delayed billing by associated providers and adjustments to statements. So it would be great if Daron were able to speak to some of the activities happening on their side around processing claims, et cetera, so that providers have a sense of what's happening there.
Chambers, Daron 29:52
Hi, Claire. Hey, all. I mean, happy, happy to talk through. I'm just looking at Ronelle's question in the chat.
I think I'm interested in, I guess, some context around maybe what the anticipated concern might be. So just probably for context in terms of what's being delivered by Services Australia, there won't be too much changing in terms of the flow of invoicing, the flow of claiming, the way that sort of late claiming and budgets are open for periods of time. So a lot of that will remain status quo as how it is now. And I guess probably just to acknowledge what's come up in the past in terms of, you know, payment statements, how we provide, you know, screens like payment reports, those sort of things have been, I guess, identified as definitely needing some improvements and some tweaking over time. So there's still some work from Services Australia to sort of outside of personal care changes, look at how the reconciliation screens and the data available could present better for providers. But like for personal care in particular, we don't see a lot of that changing. So like we still expect that the service will be delivered, that when ready, the provider will submit a claim for that service for personal care. What we need to make sure will occur from 1 October is if the service was delivered with a date pre 1 October, then it attracts the correct contribution rate and then post 1 October, there is no contribution applied. So that's the core change from our side. And like in terms of payment statements or what will be seen, there'll still be view of what contribution was applied, what subsidy was paid for that service that was delivered. The amount that's applied will be dependent on when the service was delivered, whether it was pre or post 1 October. So I'll pause there like that, in a nutshell, that's what we expect should occur.
LANCASHIRE, Claire 32:07
Yeah.
We might then bring Ronelle up to, so there's always a little bit of a lag while we take people off mute, but maybe Ronelle can expand on the questions just to give it a bit of colour and movement to see if that's kind of answered it or if there are additional questions. So over to you, Ronelle, if we've got you set up.
Chambers, Daron 32:42
Ronelle said she might be commuting, so it might be difficult to sort of walk through the comments, maybe.
LANCASHIRE, Claire 32:45
Oh, see, okay.
No, no, that's okay. Oh, we don't want you to be driving and talking or working through it. We'll have a look through that. And if there's additional stuff that we need to address in the next session, we can. I think there was another, so people have been providing some, I can see Penny's been responding, but maybe worth having a chat through, if your service agreements already anticipate this change or allow for provisions, how do providers manage that, Ben?
WARD, Penelope 33:20
Yeah, that's a really good question and thanks Alvin for posing that question. So it all comes down to how your service agreement has been structured. So if your agreements reference specific contribution rates and categories, so you've gone into that detail, even though it's not a requirement. You'll need to, in time, consider updating the relevant areas of those service agreements and potentially moving forward, updating relevant clauses to be a little bit more flexible with the contribution rates being set by Services Australia or the departments.
Not every provider will need to go into the level of detail with regards to the service agreements. What we do know also and coming from the manual is that service agreements do need to be updated or reviewed regularly and in a 12 month period.
This timing is quite key because it coincides with the anniversary of the 1 October go live as well. So if you are updating your service agreement, update those agreements to remove or amend the personal care contribution clauses with effect from 1 October make sure that participants understand and how their agreement is affected, and importantly, keeping records of those updated agreements and those participant conversations and communications.
LANCASHIRE, Claire 34:53
I'll leave it to people if there's additional questions. As always, we won't keep you on the line. We recognise how busy your time is, but I suppose I also just wanted to provide some assurance for providers listening into this as well, that we're working really closely with the Commission to share these resources and the messaging that we're providing, because as Penny stepped through, we don't want older people to be charged for these services, but we acknowledge that there might be individual cases where something might change and we probably, we just want to be ahead of this with messaging to older people that it's not done in bad faith, that it will be a...a quirk in the kind of readiness processes. So we are working with the Commission to support people and we'll be making sure that our My Aged Care Contact Centre staff are aware of in those immediate period following as well, just to make sure that older people are well supported in that if that were to arise. Alvin's just got a follow up there for you, Penn. Do they need to sign a variation?
WARD, Penelope 36:10
Will a detailed letter be sufficient? What I might do, I might see if our policy folk are on the course so we can get a detailed answer to that.
See if they are here. One moment.
SMITH, Michelle 36:33
Penny, if we don't have a policy, that's okay, a policy person online to give us a definitive response, we might take that offline and come back to the group. It's a fair question, and it's one that I think we have answered previously, but happy to take that offline and come back again.
WARD, Penelope 36:33
Yep, thank you.
LANCASHIRE, Claire 36:55
We can, if the chat is, for whatever reason, disabled, too, we can.
We can add some notes to our slides as well about questions taken on notice and put some clarifying advice there. Look, it seems like the chat is starting to quieten down. We might call it there for this week. What we're thinking for the following fortnight, again, Penny will take us through where we should be up to in the process. But we're thinking that we might have a specific focus on supporting older people from linguistically and culturally diverse communities and have a think through if there are any specific considerations there, stepping through our Comms kits again to make sure that you've got the supports that you need. And also probably just doing a canvas of what are the existing resources and supports available to providers for translations, et cetera. So we might do that. But thank you all again. I think we've had over 100 people join in across the session. I think we were, based on our current numbers, that's probably about 1000 people that have called in throughout these sessions. So it's great to work more closely with you and thank you for the supportive comments in the chat as well. We're finding that this is a really good way to engage with the sector as well. So thanks everyone. We'll get these materials out to the groups. Stay well and we'll see you in a fortnight.
WARD, Penelope 38:23
Thank you, everyone.