LANCASHIRE, Claire
Good morning, everyone.
Thanks to those who are in the call. We might just wait another moment or so and let people make their way through.
I tend to wait till we're edging up around the kind of 100 mark and then I'll make a start. So we'll give it another minute or so.
Looks like the numbers are sort of starting to ease off, so we might make a start now and let others join as they need. So hello and a warm welcome to everyone joining us here today. For those that have not joined before, I'm Claire LANCASHIRE and I lead Engagement for Support at Home Implementation.
Please note this session will be recorded and made available on the department's website. If you ask a question during the session, your name and question will be included in the recording and it will be publicly visible.
Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which we're virtually meeting today. I'm based on the lands of the Wurundjeri people. I acknowledge and pay respect to their continuing culture and the contribution they make to the life of this city and this region. I also extend that acknowledgement and respect to other families with a connexion to this region
and other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people who are here with us today.
As always, a little bit of housekeeping. This is a session for those that have been here with us now for the 16 weeks or the eight sessions that we've been doing. This is a session focused specifically on the operational matters around the personal care changes.
Unlike a webinar, it's a two-way conversation. We're really happy for people to ask questions through the chat or through a raise of hands. We'll bring you up to the screen and ask questions as well.
We can move through to the session 7 recap slides. So just before we get into today's session, a reminder of what we looked at last time. We heard and needs and practical ways to support participants with different communication, language, cultural and accessibility needs, and heard from a range of our peak bodies in the aged care sector from PICAC, FECCA ECCV and NATSIAC about supporting diverse communities. And a big thanks for those organisations for coming along to that session. I think it was really great to have some voices in the room other than those from the department. Certainly, from my perspective, as we start to think about other refinements that are happening to the support at home space, and I'm thinking principally around extension of the end of life pathway next year. Would love to partner with other organisations as we do these sessions again. And I think in future sessions as well, we might run some polls to get a sense of how you found these sessions, how useful or any improvements we could make as well. So we might do that in our next session as well.
But again, last session was really focusing on guidance and ready materials and where you needed to be and the emphasis on different communication styles.
So we might head into today's session and I'll hand you over to Penny to talk you through some of the new materials available and step you through the next part of this session today. Thanks, Penny.
WARD, Penelope 4:38
Thanks, Claire, and good morning, everybody. And so we are just under 4 weeks out from implementation now. So today's session will focus on some of those actions that you should be finalising leading up to 1 October, and we'll get to those in a minute. But what I wanted to do was just to do a recap on what we discussed in the last session is the Easy Read is now available. So Easy Read paying for personal care has been released. And on the next slide, you'll see that there's a QR code that you can access and we'll also make available a link to this in the chat as well. So what you'll find is that the resource is available, you can share it with older people, it describes the change and it's written in a way that it's easy to understand and supports accessibility and information preferences as well. So providers may choose to wish to use this resource when they're discussing the change with participants and particularly where additional communication support might be helpful. And so the resource is available in the stakeholder kit for providers. So that's something that we've been speaking about now for quite a few sessions. So we have up updated that kit and what you're seeing on the screen is the QR code directly to that easy read resource. And that will be an enduring resource. So that will remain to support conversations around paying for personal care. So a big thanks to our comms team that have who've supported the development in that.
So that closes off that item that we promised to provide to you. And so now we'll talk about implementation and readiness progress. So we're going to walk through the readiness checklist again. We'll bring that back. I think we brought that forward a couple of sessions ago. So we've got an updated, well, it's not really an updated version, but we're just reinforcing where you should be along the implementation timeline. And so at this stage, we should no longer be primarily identifying what needs to change and providers should be completing testing and confirming their arrangements in readiness for 1 October. And so as we work through each of these areas, when we move to that section of the presentation, consider whether the activity is complete or whether there needs to be some finalisation effort or perhaps there might be a risk that requires immediate attention or escalation. And so we'll also be looking at some of those activities that providers need to do post 1 October. So applying the change and also responding to participant inquiries and monitoring implementation. So that's an extension to that provider readiness checklist that we haven't spoken about yet, but has already always been available. So what you're seeing on the screen now is the timeline shows where we are today. So just under four weeks before the change comes into effect. Like I said, providers should be moving from preparation to final delivery and assurance and prioritising those activities, you know, or completing those that require those activities to work with your participants and also your workforce, finalising your system changes, testing end-to-end processes, and resolving any outstanding issues. And there's also the point to confirm ownership.
So each remaining action that we'll be going through today should have a responsible person, a completion date and a really clear escalation pathway if anything is at risk of that being implemented on time. So just to recap, on the 1st of October, personal care moves to the clinical supports contribution category and participants will no longer pay contributions for personal care services delivered from that date. And I'd like to emphasise during this session that implementation doesn't end at go live. Providers will still need to monitor billing, claiming, participant statements, service demand and participant inquiries after 1 October and we'll get to that as we move through today's slides. So we'll move on to each of the themes and I'll take you through these. For those of you who've been attending these sessions, you'll be familiar with these slides. For those of you who are new to these sessions, what we've been doing is presenting providing guidance against each of the themes and the provider readiness checklist. And so what you're hearing and seeing today is a recap of where you need to be across those themes, and also some prompts for you to take back to your organisation. The good news is that, again, the slide deck and the recording will be made available post-session, so you can take these resources back to your organisation and listen and listen to them again as well. So let's kick off with readiness theme number one, understand, build awareness and brief your stakeholders. So by now, providers should have already briefed key stakeholders across your organisation and continuing those conversations, including with your leaders, operational teams, care partners, finance teams, ICT, software vendors.
Everybody should understand by now what's changing and the actions required before 1 October. Providers should have already identified affected participants and be progressing any required updates to budgets, care plans, service agreements, and also your organisational and participant facing communications.
It's a good time to confirm any remaining readiness activities and make sure they've got clear owners, delivery dates, and escalation pathways, as I mentioned before. Again, the stakeholder kit for providers can support these conversations. So this is for conversations with your participants and then also remember that you can jump into the community of practise to get regular updates with regards to this implementation. We've been interacting regularly within that channel. And then of course, you've got your newsletters, the Your Aged Care update, you've got your websites from department to website, and also the My Aged Care website as well. So there's still, there's always lots of information that you can refer to to support this theme, especially if you need to go back and cheque some of those actions or complete some of those that are remaining. So the key question for this theme is taking it back to your organisation, have you completed the actions required to support implementation for 1 October in terms of understanding, building awareness and briefing your stakeholders.
Okay, we'll move on to the next theme and this is about preparing your participants. So at this stage, it really is a finalisation activity. Providers should still not be developing their overall approach to participant engagement. That should already be really underway. Outreach should be underway with priority given to the participants most affected, and also completing those participant conversations with regards to care plan reviews, budget updates, any service agreement reviews or updates required for implementation as well. Now, not every participant will need the same level of support. So make sure that you cheque and prioritise your participants and also consider the language, accessibility or communication support that might be needed to make sure they understand the change and who to contact with extra questions. So in our last session, and this resource is available on our collections page for the personal care contribution change provider sessions. Our last session provided you with an overview of the organisations and services you can connect with for additional support. And so providers should also assess whether the removal of contributions may increase the demand for personal care and ensure your workforce and your rostering plans can meet that demand as well. And so the key question for this phase is, have affected participants received the clear information and will their care plans, budgets and service agreements be accurate and aligned from 1 October?
Okay, we'll move to the next theme, which is preparing your organisation and workforce. So it's about making sure your organisation is operationally ready for 1 October. So by now providers should be completing the operational changes and checking that everything works from end to end.
Those care plans, budgets, service agreements, invoices, participant statements, billing and reporting must reflect the same arrangements. And a change made in one part of your organisation and your business processes may not be reflected in other parts. You need to make sure that you cheque that end to end flow and make sure that there's no errors or creating any sort of confusion within that business process as well. And so it could be wise to do a sample quality cheque before go live. Start to cheque some, you know, several participant scenarios across your entire process and confirm that everything is aligning particularly with regards to any of their outputs like billing or your statements as well. And so by now, your staff training for making sure that your staff are aware of this change and they know what to do should be underway or nearing completion as well. And for staff who speak directly with participants, make sure that they've got that clear guidance. You might have developed some internal FAQs, some inquiry scripts as examples, and also you might have started to think about some transition scenarios, particular to your organisation or your participant cohort as well. And so the key question for this stage is, if the change went live tomorrow, would your staff, processes, documents, billing arrangements produce a consistent and accurate outcome?
So think about that. Okay, we'll move on to the next theme, which is prepare ICT and systems. So ICT readiness is now about making sure that everything is working. It's no longer a planned activity. It should absolutely be underway. And so providers should be completing system configuration and testing across care management, billing, claiming, reporting, and participant facing outputs. Testing should cover the services delivered before 1 October and services delivered after 1 October. And this is important because the applicable contribution treatment depends on when the services were delivered. And confirm those changes work consistently across your connected systems and that invoices and participant statements display the correct information. And so make sure that you don't have any unresolved defects or any delays. It could be in relation to vendors or softwares. Cheque that you've got any dependencies. Make sure that they're documented, they've been assessed for risk and they're escalated as well. And providers should also confirm that they're not depending on any manual workarounds at go live. And so if you have any questions about this, now's the time, this month is the time to start to raise these questions and in these sessions, or if you didn't want it to raise it in these sessions, you can always e-mail us and connect with us, and we'll give you those details at the end of the session as well. And so the key question is, have your systems been configured and tested end to end, or you might be planning that in the next couple of days or weeks, and can you just demonstrate that they will apply the correct treatment from 1 October as well.
Okay, now, that's a lot to take in. For some people, there still might be a little bit more to do for the next 4 weeks. So you'll need to not only keep working towards the outcomes you need to be comfortable from 1 October, but you also need to start to think about what happens after 1 October. So the two slides I'll take you through now. This is in phase two of the readiness checklist. And if you haven't been or you don't recognise these next two themes, then re-familiarise yourself with the provider readiness checklist. They've been there all since we published that. It's also in the playbook as well. And there's a handful of actions and prompts that we've got in here to make sure you're starting to think about what happens post 1 October as well. And so of course, the first activity, post go live activity is to apply the change correctly from 1 October. And so personal care services delivered from that date must not attract a participant contribution and services delivered before 1 October must continue to receive the applicable treatment for the date by which they were delivered.
The providers should cheque their billing, claiming participant statements closely as the first transactions are processed. And staff should be ready to respond to participant queries and monitor any questions being received, especially where there might be some confusion with that crossover date, particularly for services in and around the end of September and start of October and make sure that your staff can respond to those queries and provide additional guidance where there might be some misunderstanding or about the change and misunderstanding about the application of misunderstanding of the application of the change. And so the key question for this one to keep on your to-do list is, are people and systems ready to apply the correct treatment from day one and be able to respond consistently to participant questions? Now on the screen there, you're also seeing our support that's on offer for implementation support. So you've got our e-mail inbox, which is the SaH.implementation@health.gov.au. So at any time you can e-mail us with queries or questions that you might have. You can also join the community of practice. There's lots of great topics in there and we've been building this readiness activity over the last 10 or so weeks.
And to join the community of practice, you can e-mail our SaH.Implementation@ health.gov.au inbox. Make sure also you're subscribing to the Your Aged Care Update and we can give you the links as part of this pack so that you can subscribe to the newsletters and alerts.
And for claiming support, you can also contact Services Australia Aged Care Provider line on the number on the screen, 1800-195206. So make sure that you've got those support channels handy. And again, this information will be available in the pack as well.
And we'll tidy up there's a couple of little errors on the screen there with the dot points. We'll just make sure that looks a little bit neater in the published pack. Okay, now let's move to the final theme, I should say, which is resolve and monitor performance. So again, this is from 1 October. So we're encouraging providers to actively monitor the arrangements to identify any issues that it might have arisen and resolving them quickly. And again, if you can't do that organisationally, then of course we've got support available to help and guide you.
So post 1 October, review your billing, claiming, reporting, your participant statement, outputs, confirm that the services delivered from 1 October do not attract personal care contributions and that earlier services continue to be treated correctly.
Start to monitor changes in personal care utilization, also your workforce capacity and rostering. If participants seek to increase personal care services, providers may need to initiate care plan reviews and also consider what that means for their workforce planning and rostering.
And so also any outstanding transition issue should have some clear owners and make sure you've got some resolution dates as well. And if you've got any persistent system issues, make sure you escalate those to your ICT team or your software vendors. And of course, at the department, we're here to help as well. And it's always good to conduct a post implementation review covering, you know, your, you know, implementation and readiness efforts, system performance, participant experiences, workforce impacts, and any lessons learned for future changes. So there will often be refinements to some of the activities and also some of the features. And so how might you be able to learn from these changes and be able to be ready to apply them to others that might come down the track?
And so the key question is what will you monitor after go live and who will review that information and how will you escalate those issues and how will they be resolved?
So...
A pause there. We've still got quite a bit of time for questions and answers, and I'll give people a little bit of time to think about if they've got anything they need clarity on, or they'd like to drop something in the chat. You might have a question. There might be some points in this presentation that you need some clarity on.
Is there any additional information you'd like us to include here? I can quickly put some links into the chat so that's nice and useful for you. But we've got some people, some programme personnel here from Policy and ICT and Services Australia. So if you have any questions, then we can use the remainder of the session to answer those.
LANCASHIRE, Claire 24:09
Penny, while people are having a ponder on what you've presented today, I just wanted to let people know as part of some of our other engagement with the sector more broadly on Support at Home and these changes, we had a discussion as well this week about are there any risks for older people in not understanding this change as it gets closer or goes live? And the feedback that we had from our participant
peaks was probably that older people are feeling like they haven't heard much about it yet in some ways, but not that they were concerned, but more so probably any comms coming from the department in the next little while for older people needs to be couched in what are a range of things that are happening in and around the months of October. That might mean that providers are having a discussion with older people about their care plans and service agreements. So we will do some additional communications to older people through our engaged articles, but also through, we'll do some news items on the My Aged Care website that talk about those different things that are happening around the sector in terms of award raises, nursing award raises, a few other items, including personal care, and where older people can go if they're feeling like they need to talk to their provider again. I suppose to counter that for people who are sitting on this call, the providers that we're talking to regularly as well say that you're doing exactly what you need to be through these sessions as well to talk to your participants, and we're feeling that
people are really well supported and that you're not getting a lot of questions as well. So I think it was a really good discussion to say any risks are being really well managed and additional comms just need to kind of couch for older people where is the sector up to in a range of items. So we'll be doing that.
And we can share links through these sessions as well around any kind of comms that we've directed for older people. And we'll also support participant peaks with some messaging in the lead up to. And I think, Penny, when you had done some of those situations that we want to avoid, if we do find that someone has been charged when they shouldn't, will be giving peaks and providers those talking points because it's not out of malice. It'll be that something hasn't quite worked well in the system. So I think that's helpful. I'm just looking, we've got some, have we got questions in, are there resources in the chat?
Were there any questions, thoughts, concerns?
Only a few weeks out now, so now's the time to really ask if we've got something in the Q&A.
I'm just going to have a look at that other one. I think it's relating to something else, but I think I saw a raise of hands for Yvette if we wanted to bring Yvette to screen and to be able to ask.
Thanks, Yvette. Not sure if you're able to come off mute, I'll see if I can do it. No, I can't.
One of our techies in the back will walk.
Take you off mute shortly.
How are we going, folks?
We've brought Yvette to screen now, we managed to be able to give her voice.
Sorry about that, Yvette. I'm not sure what's happening. It might be better to post the question in the chat for now.
Okay, so we've got another comment in the chat about system configuration not being ready. Again, and sort of asking for people to comment about that would be really helpful to hear, I suppose. We've got people from Services Australia.
The things that software vendors needed have been out for quite some time and there are regular forums for them to engage with services as well. So it would be helpful to probably provide us a bit more commentary on what the holdup has been for your vendors.
Have you had any luck for Yvette? If not, maybe pop it in the chat. Yvette.
Sorry, that's not that's not played well today.
WARD, Penelope 29:47
Yes.
I think I can see, ohh, is it coming through?
No, it's gone.
LANCASHIRE, Claire 29:58
So have we got someone from Services, I'm just wondering if you've heard anything about any tech delays for providers that are going to hold up the ability to test any of these changes?
And any advice on what providers can do in this instance?
Hey, Daron.
Chambers, Daron 30:21
Hey, Claire. I mean, I'm Daron from Services Australia. Hi all. Look, in terms of readiness and anything that we're hearing specifically from developers, you know, there's not a lot of that coming through to us in terms of not being ready, and
Also, we're not hearing much about any issues with, you know, the current setup of what's available to test in the vendor environment based on the changes that are coming through. We had run a quarterly developer webinar that Services Australia run.
I think that was probably two, three weeks ago now. Personal care changes is always something that's on the agenda for us to sort of float in that forum.
Not hearing too much, to be honest. So I guess from the comments that I'm reading in the chat as well, it sounds like it's, you know, I'm not sure if that's something that sort of is more around communication between provider and vendor more specifically, but, you know, just in general, not hearing anything in terms of sort of blockers.
At this stage, any of the APIs that have been sent out that are being affected has been made pretty clear and we haven't really received any feedback so far. So, I mean, that's from my end, Claire, unless, yeah, we get more sort of detail around specific scenarios, that's probably the update.
LANCASHIRE, Claire 31:58
Penny, I'm just wondering in our support channels, I suppose, do we want people to reach in to notify us if they're having delays and what that might mean? So use when we publish the pack, Meke, and apologies if I'm mispronouncing your surname,
WARD, Penelope 32:07
Yeah.
LANCASHIRE, Claire 32:18
perhaps look at the supports and reach into us to give us a bit more information about who the provider is and etc you don't have to do that here. And then we can perhaps give you a bit more advice about kind of next steps and try and understand what that impact might be.
WARD, Penelope 32:36
Absolutely, we'll make that clear and we might even be able to reach out as well. So we'll take a note of that one.
LANCASHIRE, Claire 32:49
Now... There's a question from Fay about an update to a web page. I think we'll have to take that on take that on notice. I'm not sure if anyone on the call will be able to answer that one specifically.
But we will take it on notice and either address it in the published pack or make a note of it for the next session.
WARD, Penelope 33:27
Okay.
LANCASHIRE, Claire 33:27
But we'll take that as an action for us.
Look, Penny, I think it's been pretty quiet. We've got a little bit of conversation happening around different providers or software vendors, etc. But it does seem pretty quiet on the front and I don't want to be keeping people unnecessarily. I suppose if this session has raised any concerns about the timing with your vendors reach in. We'll see what we can do and advice we can provide. And it will be helpful for us to understand the kind of quantum of providers potentially impacted. We'll follow up about the nursing wage increase and then we'll have our next and final session, Penny, on personal care changes in the next fortnight.
A massive thanks to Penny for all the work that she's done and working through with providers on this. She'll be on some well-earned leave at that time, so I'll have another co-pilot on with me for those sessions, but a big shout out to Penny for that work. And I think we really would love to be able to use some of that time to take some live polls about how this has worked for people and ways that we can use this in further sessions.
Thank you all. Stay well. I'm looking at the chat if there's anything further. No. So look, we might leave it there. Stay well, everyone. Enjoy the first week of spring. We'll see you in a fortnight. And then we'll have some further updates too about how we might pivot these sessions to a new focus going forward as well.
LANCASHIRE, Claire 35:09
Bye for now.
WARD, Penelope 35:10
Terrific. Thanks, everybody.
stopped transcription