Publishing finances and operations information on the My Aged Care website – Home Care providers

Publishing finances and operations information on the My Aged Care website – Home Care Providers

Section 1: Introduction – Publication on the My Aged Care website

From February 2024 the department will begin publishing aged care providers’ finance and operations information on the My Aged Care website through the existing Find a Provider tool.

The additional information will be available for Residential Care and Home Care providers.

Increasing transparency helps older people, their families, and carers make informed decisions about their care.

This video provides a brief overview of the additional information that will be published for Residential Care providers.

There is also a video about the additional information that will be published for Home Care providers – this is available on the department’s website.

 

The financial and operational information being published on the My Aged Care website includes:

• Food preparation
• Income and expenses
• Surplus or deficit position
• Hourly rates for Registered Nurses, Enrolled Nurses, Personal Care Workers/ Assistants in Nursing and Home Care Workers

Some of this information will be updated quarterly and some of the information will be updated annually.

 

The new information also includes:

• Activities to support a diverse and inclusive environment 
• Diversity of the provider’s governing body 
• Compliance information from the provider’s board 
• Service provision and use. 

This information will be updated annually.

To access this new information, go the My Aged Care website in your internet browser: www.myagedcare.gov.au

• Click on the Find a Provider tool.
• Select Search for a provider from the drop-down menu.
• Select Find a provider by name and click Next.
• Then Type in an aged care provider name. Then click Search. 

Section 2: Residential Care information – Publication on the My Aged Care website

The new information is listed in the tabs running underneath the green banner.

For Residential Care providers, additional data has been included in the:

• Overview tab
• Compliance tab 
• Residents experience tab
• Staffing tab
• and the Finances & operations tab.

 

I will show you the new information in each of these tabs.

I’ll flag that all the following screenshots are mock examples only. The data is made up.

 

First let’s go to the Overview tab.

 

For Residential Care, the Overview tab has additional information about Food and meals, as well as diversity and inclusion information about the service.

For Food and meals, new information has been included about how much was spent on food during the quarter.

This information complements that which is already available on My Aged Care about consumers’ experiences of food.

The new information is drawn from the Quarterly Financial Report and will be updated quarterly.

To see more information about food and meals, click on ‘show details’ to see new information about how food is prepared.

This will show the proportion of food prepared on site vs. offsite and whether breakfast, lunch and/or dinner is typically prepared from fresh, frozen or chilled.

The ‘Show details’ also includes a Sample menu (PDF), if the provider has provided this information.

 

The Overview Tab also includes information about specialised care.

While specialised care information is not new in My Aged Care, we have included new information in this section about Diversity & Inclusion

This information can be found by clicking on “Show details”.

You will see the new information about “What the provider does to make people from all backgrounds feel welcome?”.

This information shows whether the Residential Care provider has:

• policies and procedures for culture, diversity and inclusion, 
• policies and procedures for cultural safety, and
• social activities to support culture, diversity and inclusion. 

 

The next tab we will look at is the Compliance tab – this is an existing tab – with new information.

The Compliance tab for each Residential Care service on My Aged Care will include compliance information from the provider’s board.

The information will be published to show whether the provider’s governing body reported that the provider Has or Has Not complied with all of its legislative responsibilities and requirements during the last financial year.

 

Where the governing body reports a non-compliance, specific information will be included about:

• the type of non-compliance (e.g. Aged Care Quality Standards in this example)
• whether the non-compliance issue was resolved within the reporting period 
• the reasons for the non-compliance, and 
• the actions taken to resolve the non-compliance.

 

In the Residents experience tab, there is new information about the most common kinds of compliments, and concerns raised with the Residential Care provider, as well as key improvements the provider has made.

 

The next tab we will look at is the Staffing tab – this is an existing tab – with new information.

The Staffing tab shows how staff at this organisation are paid, and how it compares to the sector average.

This example shows the hourly wage rate for three occupations working for that provider including a registered nurse, enrolled nurse and personal care worker.

It also includes the lowest and highest hourly wage rate for each of the three occupations.

 

Information about the different kinds of care offered at this residential service is listed. For example, this provider employs the following types of staff:

• Dieticians
• Podiatrists
• Nurses
• Physiotherapists
• Other allied health staff
• Speech pathologists

 

The Finances & operations tab is a new tab that has been added.

This is where most of the financial information will be presented, along with additional business details published about the Residential Care provider.

This includes information about the provider’s expenses, income, surplus or deficit.

 

The expenditure information for each provider shows how much the provider spent on care and services in the last financial year.

All financial information for Residential Care providers is presented as ‘per resident per day’.

 

The information is also shown next to the sector average. The sector average is actually a median figure from the sector’s reported information. The median is not well understood and this is why the term average has been used. This will also be made clear alongside the reported information.

 

Clicking on the arrows to the right of each category of spending, expands each item to see which items are included in each category.

By clicking on the arrow next to ‘Care and nursing’ you can see a breakdown of spending on different care and nursing staff.

 

Continue to scroll down the Finances & operations page for more information on provider finances, including income sources and surplus/deficit information.

 

Here is another Expenditure example, where you can see the sector average figures reported against each data item.

Still in the Finances & operations page, information will be provided about where the provider gets its income from?

Similar to expenditure, income is also shown as per resident per day, alongside sector averages.

A pie chart will show how Income is split between government funding, contributions from residents, and from ‘Other income’, which relates to income from investments.

 

You can click on the arrows to the right of each income category for more information about what’s included in each of these income categories.

Still in the Finances & operations tab is information about How much the provider’s budget was in surplus or deficit in the last financial year.

This information shows whether a Residential Care service made a surplus or deficit during the last financial year.

Surplus’ (if it’s a positive figure) or ‘Deficit’ (if it’s a negative figure) are used here rather than ‘profit’ or ‘loss’.

This is also shown alongside the sector average. 

Additional Business details will also include information about the service usage (that is, the number of residents, new residents who moved in, and the number of people who ceased living at the service).

For Residential Care providers, service usage will also include average occupancy alongside the sector average.

 

Before we wrap up this video on Residential Care providers, you can also view similar information on Home Care providers.

Search for the provider under Find a provider tool on the My Aged Care website.

The new information is in the tabs running underneath the purple banner.

For Home Care providers, the new information has been included in:

• the Overview tab
• the Compliance tab 
• and the Finances & operations tab.

 

Section 3: Support – Publication on the My Aged Care website

For more detailed information please refer to:

• The Publishing of finance and operations information webpage available on our website: www.health.gov.au.
  • This includes training resources including FAQs, webinar recording and videos.
• For technical difficulties, contact the My Aged Care Service Provider and Assessor Helpline toll free no. 1800 836 799 (option 5)
• For all other enquiries, email the Provider Operations Data mailbox: ProviderOperationsData@Health.gov.au.