Digital Transformation Tech Talk – 11 June 2025

[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, Disability and Ageing’, ‘Australian Government with Crest (logo)’, ‘, ‘Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’, ‘www.health.gov.au’, ‘Meeting #24’, ‘11 June 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] 

Janine Bennett: 

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to today’s Tech Talk. We’re back with the latest insights into digital transformation for the aged care sector at a very timely moment for us all to connect particularly given last week’s announcements regarding the new Aged Care Act. 

Before we get to that some important information to set the scene for today. Firstly my name is Janine Bennett. I’m the Assistant Secretary and Engagement Lead for the Department’s Digital Transformation Program and I’ll be your moderator for today’s webinar. It’s lovely to be back with you all. 

I’m joining today from Canberra, the lands of the Ngunnawal and the Ngambri people. I want to acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging and also extend that respect to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people joining us today. Thank you for joining. It’s great to have you with us. 

A few quick housekeeping notes before we begin. As always if you run into any connection issues during the session you’ll find dial in details on your screen and also in your meeting invite. Feel free to use those to get back in. Today’s webinar is being recorded as is the usual case. We’ll upload the video to our website so you can revisit it or share it with anyone who couldn’t be here today. For easy reference we’ve posted all of the links that we’ll be referring to today in the chat already so feel free to copy those if there’s any of interest for you, particularly if you prefer not to use the QR codes that we include on screen throughout our presentations. You will also receive these links in your post-event email as well so don’t worry. You won’t miss out on those. 

As usual we’ve set aside time at the end of the session today for your questions. Please type them in the Q&A tab at the top of your Teams window at any time throughout the webinar. That way we can get them lined up for the Q&A segment in the final half hour. If you’d like to ask your question live to the panel I’ll get you to raise your hand once I announce your name so that we can queue you up to bring you to stage. We’ve had varying success with this in MS Teams so we’ll do our best to give you a warning and then get you queued for stage. If that doesn’t work for any reason or if you’re feeling shy today and prefer not to come to stage that’s all fine. I’m happy to read out the questions on your behalf.  

Please submit questions as we go and if you see ones you’re interested in feel free to vote them up. We’ll try and get to the most popular questions first. Keep in mind that we do generally receive more questions than we have time to answer and that we need to have the right people in the room to be able to answer some of these questions. So if you don’t hear a response to your question just know we’re not ignoring you. Sometimes we can’t give you an answer in the moment but we do take all of the popular questions offline and we do our best to come back to you with responses to all of those. Thanks for your understanding. I’m sure you can appreciate we’re getting a lot of questions at the moment. 

Keep in mind that our focus here at Tech Talk is on our technology and delivery work but having said that today we have speakers with expertise on reform implementation, digital transformation and delivery, Support at Home, GPMS, B2G and My Aged Care. And they will be on the panel able to take questions. I’d also like to extend a warm welcome to any media representatives joining us today. We appreciate your continued interest in our important work and the work that’s happening more broadly across aged care. Just be aware if you do have media related questions please direct those to our media and events team at news@health.gov.au. Those folks are best placed to help you with any formal media requests. 

Okay. So let’s take a look at our agenda today. Fay Flevaras our CDIO is not with us today so instead we’ll be hearing from Brian Schumacher who is our Acting Chief Digital Information Officer. Brian is joined by Greg Pugh, the First Assistant Secretary from our Reform Implementation Division and they will talk about the plans for digital delivery and reform following last week’s deferral announcement for the new Aged Care Act. We then have Lezah Rushton and Marguerite Gandini who will talk about Support at Home, and then we’ll be joined by Amanda Smith and Emma Cook who will present on the Government Provider Management System. And as always we’ll close out with our Q&A session. 

So Brian I believe this might be the first time you’re hosting a Tech Talk for us so I wanted to start out by saying thank you for stepping in. Greg great to see you back again. You’re a previous speaker at our tech Talks. With all of the formalities out of the way I’ll hand the reigns over to you two. Thanks so much. 

Brian Schumacher: 

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Digital Transformation/Aged Care Reform’, ‘Brian Schumacher’, ‘Acting Chief Digital Information Officer’, ‘Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’, ‘Greg Pugh’, ‘First Assistant Secretary, Reform Implementation Division’, ‘Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’, ‘Australian Government with Crest (logo)’, ‘Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’] 

Thanks Janine and welcome everyone online. I think it is my first time hosting. So really looking forward to today’s session. With that I’ll hand over to Greg to kick us off. 

Greg Pugh: 

Thanks Janine and thanks Brian. I am a bit of an infrequent flyer at these Tech Talk forums but thanks for having me back for what I think is my third cameo. I did just want to spend a couple of minutes reminding people of the events that have occurred over the last week that Janine mentioned in her opening spiel. So look I know most of you will be familiar with it. I’ll try not to labour the point too much. I am going to stick around for the Q&A session so happy to take any specific questions that you might have at that point in time as well. 

So look if you weren’t already aware last Wednesday the 4th of June Minister Butler and Minister Rae announced that the start date of the new Aged Care Act 2024 will be briefly deferred. The deferral period will be for four months from the originally scheduled commencement date of 1 July 2025 to the new commencement date of 1 November 2025. 

As you will have heard the Minister say and as has been well covered in the media since a primary driver as we have heard loud and clear that the feedback that some parts of the sector are well prepared for the system but there are plenty of others there who need more time. And so this feedback has been fundamental in supporting the decision of a brief start date deferral. And ultimately it’s going to mean a better outcome for older people so it’s hard to argue with. 

Simply put that deferral means that the aged care sector at large will have more time to prepare. This will include more time to talk to our older people around how aged care is changing and in doing that really uphold those fundamental objectives of the Act and also to include and make sure that the rights of older people are protected, that care assessments are easier, that aged care service information is transparent and be really clear and understand what older people should expect from providers and workers. 

Older people will have more time to understand the Support at Home Changes. My esteemed colleague Lezah Rushton and others will be talking to you further about this shortly including around digital readiness, home care package participant arrangements, provider held unspent funds and more.  

So we will continue to work in partnership with our many advisory bodies including the Aged Care Transition Taskforce, peak bodies, advocacy organisations and of course this group and the sector partners forum to ensure that transition to the new Act on the new timeline is as smooth as it possibly can be. As I said that deferral is going to allow for aged care providers to prepare clients, support workers, and ensure systems are ready for the changes. And from the Department/Government perspective we will be continuing to provide that guidance and training to support the sector to get the implementation right. 

What it does mean also though, it’s not an opportunity to renegotiate settled Government positions. There has been a deferral given based on current policy settings and it is these policy settings that will be implemented from 1 November 2025. That said of course we absolutely want to hear all of the detailed implementation questions that you might have. So either today if we can answer them otherwise we’ll take them on notice and get back to you through the appropriate channels as Janine mentioned. And we’ll point you back to all of our authoritative sources of truth such as the Support at Home Program Manual and make sure that they are updated to address those specifics. 

So I really just wanted to thank you for the opportunity to set the scene, provide that overview and context for deferral and as I said at the beginning happy to take any questions at the end of the forum. 

Brian Schumacher: 

Excellent. Thanks Greg. It’s really important that our digital work remains firmly grounded in policy intent so it’s good to kind of hear where we’re headed with that.  

So with that foundational info about the recent changes I’d like to take everyone through our current position on the digital roadmap. 

As many of the regulars to the Tech Talks will already know our roadmap is really a forecast of the work across our current plan. 

In terms of this particular roadmap most of you will know we have a usual disclaimer. It’s our technical delivery roadmap. I want you to think of it like our digital plan. It’s important to note that the timeline supports the agreed aged care reform agenda. It shouldn’t be considered an official commitment though. This happens through other processes outside of the Tech Talks. You’ve heard previously at other Tech Talks we make a point of sharing this roadmap early and often, really to be transparent and open with you about what we’re working on and what we’re planning for. So whenever there’s a change we’ll call it out here as soon as we know. 

So what’s changed so far? In the spirit of the change in the Act in terms of the date what it means for us is really that we had a body of work that was planned to be delivered in June or the end of June and 1st of July. So what you see up on screen right now is the plan that we were working towards for that. So those elements that sit within that May and June timeframe will be moved to the 1 November release and we’re currently going through a planning exercise looking at what was sitting in that October and December timeframe and how much of that we can actually bring forward. There is one exception to that though. We have delivered the APIs, the beta APIs for B2G delivered in May so that is available at the moment. 

In terms of other things that we’re looking at when we’re doing that replanning we’re looking at what other capabilities there might be in the package of work that we have on our roadmap that will help make the implementation smoother in particular for the sector. So where there’s opportunities to reduce manual workarounds and those sorts of things we’ll look to see whether we can bring those forward or incorporate them into that November timeframe. 

So at the moment this roadmap hasn’t been updated yet but we’re planning to do so over the coming weeks. Once we have that information we’ll look to release that back out to both sector partners and also Tech Talk forums. 

A couple of other things to cover off today. There’s been a few new and updated resources that we’ll bring to your attention since the last Tech Talk. So we’ll start with the NACA related content. So we have the published provider operational readiness priority actions list. So this is aimed to help providers with their preparations. We’ve also got the guide for providers in the sector. We updated this just recently which gives providers of in-home and residential aged care an overview of what reforms will impact them as well as how they can access support and have their say about the reforms. In addition we’ve got the My Aged Care website. We’ve introduced the Support at Home fee estimator and the updated existing residential care fee estimator. Both estimators are a guide to assist care recipients and their families to estimate their new care fee arrangements however just keep in mind that the exact amount that someone will end up paying will be assessed by Services Australia and then communicated to them and their providers. 

The DEX data protocols are set to be released either today or tomorrow on the Department’s website for CHSP reporting from 1 July. We can confirm that providers will be able to see in DEX a dropdown list against all the new service lists for CHSP services from 1 July 2025. And the DEX helpline at DSS have been provided with FAQs for the changes if a provider does call them. 

The CHSP changes for 1 July are minor with providers mapping the current CHSP service names to the new names and the sub-names in the reporting. A further stage will be released for providers to report their clients’ My Aged Care IDs through DEX from January 2026 with a period of sandpit ability for providers to do dummy uploads prior to the go live date. A further point of release in January will then have the providers’ ability to report the additional fields that were outlined in the webinar and our fact sheet in December 2024. 

All right. So moving on to the next agenda item which has built in a number of answers to popular questions that we’ve had at previous Tech Talks. Pleased to welcome to the stage Lezah Rushton, Assistant Secretary, Assessment Home Care Transition Branch and Marguerite Gandini, Acting Assistant Secretary from the Aged Care Funding reform and Systems Branch. All right. Over to you Lezah. 

Lezah Rushton: 

[Visual of slide with text saying Support at Home’, ‘Lezah Rushton’, ‘Assistant Secretary’, ‘Assessment Home Care Transition Branch’, ‘Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’, ‘Marguerite Gandini’, ‘A/g Assistant Secretary’, ‘Aged Care Funding Reform and Systems Branch’, ‘Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’, ‘Australian Government with Crest (logo)’, ‘Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’] 

Thanks Brian and good afternoon everybody. Today I’ll be covering a range of items to help you further understand what is needed to transition Home Care Package clients to Support at Home. I’ll cover digital readiness activities for the My Aged Care Service and Support Portal, classification for transitioning Home Care Package levels, arrangements for provider held Commonwealth unspent funds, and transition activities for Home Care Package providers to enable their clients to access assistive technology and home modifications. Then I’ll hand over to Marguerite from the IT area who will be providing an update on service delivery branches and claiming data. 

So the Department is continuing with delivering staged digital capability to enable the launch of Support at Home. To support the staged digital approach some interim processes have been developed and I will cover those for you today. So firstly I wanted to talk about the steps that providers will need to take as part of the transition period to update information on the My Aged Care Services and Support Portal. So in the month prior to commencement of the program providers will need to complete two tasks. These are to validate roles assigned to users in the My Aged Care Service and Support Portal. This should include confirming that the person nominated as the organisation administrator is correct. The other is updating the service pricing schedule in the My Aged Care Service and Support Portal. This requires providers to upload a revised pricing schedule for Support at Home services they will offer. 

From commencement of the Support at Home program providers will need to update service information in the My Aged Care Service and Support Portal. A provider’s Support at Home Services will be defaulted to be available across each outlet based on their registered categories. Providers will need to verify and update the services they are delivering. This will include removing services that are not delivered from a particular outlet. Providers will need to ensure they update their service description, location, availability, add their prices and check all migrated settings are correct. In completing the update of this information providers should be aware that if services provided within a registered category change from 1 November 2025, meaning if you remove or add a service type within your registration category, a provider will need to notify the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission through a change in circumstances application. 

Also please note that if all services within a type are to be removed in a category providers will need to submit an application for variation form to the Commission to remove that registration category. 

When Support at Home commences these changes will be implemented in the My Aged Care Service and Support Portal and the My Aged Care online account to reflect the Support at Home program features. We will be issuing updated user guidance for the My Aged Care Service and Support Portal and this will be published to support providers to undertake these tasks. 

Last month I spoke to this forum and discussed the classification arrangement for the current Home Care Package funding levels. We might go to the next slide please. So just to recap on that current Home Care Package funding levels will be retained for anyone on a Home Care Package or approved for a package at the commencement of the new Act. The four Home Care Package funding levels do not map to any of the eight Support at Home ongoing classifications as those budget amounts don’t align. So in our business requirements we are suggesting that this is managed as for additional classifications that we call transitioned Home Care Package classifications Level 1, 2, 3 and 4. So in practice there are eight ongoing classifications, three short term classifications, end of life, restorative care and assistive technology and home modifications, and four transitioned HCP classifications. 

Services Australia claiming services will be set up to receive claims for the four transitioned Home Care Package classification budgets. Services Australia will manage the translation of the annual Home Care Package allocation to the appropriate quarterly budget amount to enable Support at Home claiming. 

Next slide please. As you know Home Care Package recipients and people in the national priority system will automatically transition to Support at Home from commencement of the new Act. To enable this transition Home Care Package entry notifications will transition to Support at Home automatically. That is current Home Care Package entry notifications become the Support at Home entry notification. This will be managed by Services Australia and there is no action required by providers. Home Care Package recipients will also be deemed for all services on the Support at Home service list. Again this is managed by Services Australia and there is no action for providers from a claiming perspective. However providers will need to work with their participants to agree new Service Agreements that include an agreement on the mix of services and those prices under Support at Home. 

Home Care Package recipients will receive a budget that matches the same funding level as their current Home Care Package. As mentioned this is managed as the four additional classifications that we are calling transitioned Home Care Package classifications 1, 2, 3 and 4. Home Care Package recipients will keep any unspent funds for use under Support at Home and they will be deemed for access to assistive technology and home modification if needed. 

Next slide please. The Commonwealth portion of unspent funds will be managed by Services Australia. So this could be made up of two parts. We have provider held accumulated Home Care Package subsidy paid by the Commonwealth to the provider for recipients who were receiving Home Care Packages prior to September 2021. It will also include the accumulated Home Care Package subsidy paid by the Commonwealth and managed by Services Australia as the participant’s Home Care account. So a participant may have one or both of these sources of unspent funds. 

Participants can use Commonwealth unspent funds to pay for approved services once their quarterly budget has been fully exhausted and to access assistive technology and home modifications to meet their assessed needs. A transitional period for provider claiming processes in the first month of Support at Home will allow for the reconciliation of Home Care Package unspent funds following the closure of the Home Care Package program. Providers will need to report their final provider held Commonwealth unspent fund balances for each of their participants in their final Home Care Package claim. After the final Home Care Package claim providers will no longer need to report on Commonwealth unspent funds. This means that no further monthly Commonwealth unspent fund statements are required from providers as Services Australia will manage the balance on an ongoing basis. Commonwealth unspent funds can remain with the provider as part of a mandatory drawdown model. 

Participants and provider budgets including Commonwealth unspent funds will be available for viewing via the Services Australia Aged Care Provider Portal and the B2G solution where applicable.  

A provider can elect to return Commonwealth held unspent funds on behalf of a HCP recipient at any time. Also if Services Australia receive a correction from a provider to the final declared amount of the Commonwealth unspent funds Services Australia can administer this adjustment as per the current processes. 

Next slide please. Once a participant’s unspent funds amounts are set up for Support at Home the following rules will apply for how these funds are used when a claim is lodged. The claims for payment for non-assistive technology and home modification services – so those ongoing services are restorative care and end of life pathways – will be prioritised or debited in the following order. So firstly from the participant’s quarterly budget. Once the quarterly budget is exhausted then provider held Commonwealth unspent funds and then any funds that are in the Home Care account. Payment for assistive technology and home modification services to participants will be prioritised in the following order. So firstly from any provider held Commonwealth unspent funds, then from any Home Care account funds, and then the participants are assigned an assistive technology, home modification funding tier. Services Australia will no longer utilise a participant’s Commonwealth unspent funds and the Home Care account once those respective funds have been fully exhausted. 

Next slide please. Home Care Package recipients as I mentioned will be deemed to have an assistive technology and home modification approval when we transition to Support at Home. This will allow them to spend their unspent funds on assistive technology and home modifications from the 1st of November. If a transitioned participant has insufficient unspent funds to meet their assistive technology and home modification needs they will require a support plan review to access one of the new tiers of assistive technology and home modification funding. To streamline this process during transition and to reduce pressure on our assessment workforce the Department will temporarily manage requests for assistive technology and home modification funding tiers for existing clients via a provider data collection process rather than individualised support plan reviews.  

Providers will need to have supporting evidence for their requests, for example quotes from suppliers or prescriptions. Transitioned participants will still need to exhaust any unspent funds before accessing any additional funding approved. The Department is working through testing the data collection submission process with some providers over the coming weeks and further information will be shared with all providers on how they can request additional assistive technology and home modification funding for transitioned participants shortly. 

I’ll now hand over to Marguerite. 

Marguerite Gandini: 

Thanks Lezah. And much like Greg I’ve made a couple of cameo appearances previously before in Tech Talks so thanks for having me back again today. I’m going to be talking to you from an Aged Care Gateway perspective. So we work very closely with Lezah and her team to respond to some of the questions that have come through on a more technical nature. And one of the pieces of feedback that we’ve received is that there’s been some questions on how the Service Delivery Branch translates in the ACG and Services Australia systems. So I understand that more broadly the intention is to share a fact sheet on the end to end process but while that’s coming through today I’m just going to provide some more detail on how the ACG component will consume the registered provider data from GPMS. 

So before I go into detail on the slide in front of you, just to recap, make sure we’re all on the same page, in the new act the term ‘Service Delivery Branch’ will replace ‘Notified Home Care Service’ which is defined in the current Act. That name change is to avoid confusion between aged care services and home care services. But I guess in theory it doesn’t really represent any intended operational changes for providers. So a Service Delivery Branch is defined as a type of program payment entity. I think in most of the communications and artefacts you would have seen it’s PPE because we couldn’t go without an acronym. So that enables our payments, allocations of places and program delivered by a registered provider. It’s defined for payment purposes for the Support at Home program.  

If you need more information on the definitions I’d just refer you to the glossary that’s been published alongside the GPMS conceptual data model. You can find a lot more detail than what I will be able to cover in today’s time. 

So without wading too far into the GPMS and Services Australia systems what this means for NAPS is as this is equivalent to what’s currently known as a service all existing Home Care services will keep the same NAPS service ID following migration to provider register, so GPMS 2 on 1 November 2025. And the NAPS service ID will continue to be used by Services Australia for claiming and payments. The pooling of care management fundings will occur at this level. 

So what I’m now going to focus on on the slide in front of us is how the Aged Care Gateway systems will align to new structures defined to support the Support at Home program and this alignment we’ll start with, which is the GPMS and ACG transition simplified view. So on this slide you’ll see we’ve got the GPMS version 2 data structure from 1 November on the left and the corresponding ACG structure on the right. So I’m going to start off with some good news which is from an ACG perspective no action is required from providers for the registered provider structure. This is actually going to be managed by us.  

So what we’ll do as part of the November release is to ensure all Support at Home provider data in ACG aligns to the registered provider structure in GPMS. So this means the registered categories that a provider is approved for will be stored against the provider record. So that’s tier two in ACG. And for each service delivery branch/PPE a new service item which is tier 3 of type Support at Home will be created in ACG. Each service is also associated with an outlet service item in ACG available for each intake. So we’re going to seek to align the existing Home Care Package outlet configuration for Support at Home which we’ve got detailed more on the next slide. So if we can pop to the next slide please. 

So this is how we’re going to convert the HCP outlets to Support at Home outlets. So this is going to require some action from providers. So I led with the good news earlier but this one will actually need a little bit of work from both parties. So we’ve broken this down into sort of three cohorts or phases if you like, so what we need providers to do prior to the release, what we will do as part of the transition, and then there’s some activity post the release.  

So I’m going to just start with prior to the release. The providers will be requested to upload the Support at Home pricing schedule against the existing HCP service. So this will be copied over to the new Support at Home services part of the release which from 1 November will be represented under the attachments you can see on the screen in front of you under the Support at Home service. That’s where you’ll find that. The other thing that we will need providers to do is to ensure the outlet names and descriptions are up to date as the existing HCP outlets will be transitioned into the Support at Home outlet. So that’s the green box that’s highlighted on the slide there. They need to be up to date as possible. 

What we will do as part of the release, so each HCP and STRC outlet will be converted into a Support at Home outlet. A Support at Home service will be created for each unique group of HCP1 or STRC items within the outlet. The languages, attributes, service delivery area and attachments from the HCP service will be copied over to the corresponding Support at Home service. All services in each registration category that a provider is deemed into will be set to available. So that’s what we’re going to cover as part of the release activities. 

Then post the release we are asking providers to do a couple of things. So one of those is confirming service availability, delivery hours and other copied data and the other component is add prices for each service to ensure the budget calculator is operational. So I think some communication has been sent to providers with a lot more detail on how outlets will work on day one but hopefully this has helped to fill in some of the gaps about how ACG is for want of a better word consuming the information and the structures from GPMS and Services Australia. 

I’m going to hand back to you Janine for our next speakers. 

Brian Schumacher: 

I think it will jump to me Marguerite. Thanks Lezah and Marguerite. I know we’ve had a lot of questions in the past around Support at Home so hopefully some of those questions have been answered or addressed by your presentations. 

All right. Up next we have an update on Government Provider Management System. So I’d like to welcome Amanda Smith, Assistant Secretary for Aged Care Quality and Transformation Branch and Emma Cook from Digital Reform Branch. Over to you Emma. 

Emma Cook: 

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Emma Cook’, ‘Assistant Secretary’, Digital Reform Branch’, ‘Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’, ‘Amanda Smith’, ‘Assistant Secretary’, ‘Transformation and Quality Branch’, ‘Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’, ‘Australian Government with Crest (logo)’, ‘Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’] 

Thanks Brian and thanks to everyone for joining today. It’s wonderful to be here. We are excited to be sharing a little bit of a recap on GPMS and how it’s changing, providing a sneak peek on some of the new system functionality as well as an update on all of our communications and change materials that are both available and incoming to support providers to transition to the new Aged Care Act. 

So we’ll jump straight into it. And I should say and then of course my colleague Amanda will give an update on the technical delivery and overall GPMS system within that broader IT ecosystem for the new Act. Thanks Amanda. 

So jumping straight into this first slide. A lot is really remaining the same and this picture is probably familiar for a lot of providers, and both operationally and the interactions that you will have with GPMS will be very similar to that that you presently have albeit it in a context of a lot of new information and pieces. So up on the screen you can see a lot of these highlighted in a simple view but of course supported by a huge range of documentation on our website. And I’ll jump through these now.  

So in terms of key areas of change we’ve got provider registration. So we know providers and registered providers will be defined by one ABN. So you’ll have that single ABN structure and that will interact with how you access GPMS as a registered provider. Once in GPMS all registered providers will be active from that commencement date of 1 November. And your categories, so your registration categories under the new Regulatory Model will be provided and made available to you in that portal. You’ll also be able to – you’ll have new pieces of information and some new processes that accompany those like the Places to People which means that your total bed numbers will be approved by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission through that process of registration. 

Then jumping through into access. So really in terms of how GPMS is accessed it’s very similar to today, albeit that you will need one email, so one specific email per registered provider. And grant funded providers. We’ll be welcoming our NATSIFAC and CHSP providers onto the GPMS system and of course specific information and direct outreach will be provided to you by the Department to help to steward you onto the system. 

And then jumping through into managing your organisation. So you’ll continue to use GPMS of course to manage the information about your organisation and your personnel and that information will as I’ve touched on align to the new Aged Care Act. So you’ll see some new titles and some slightly different structures and things like that, that registration category that I mentioned. You’ll also see associated providers. So you will be familiar with third parties that you currently see in GPMS and those will be represented as your new associated providers. And you’ll need to continue to view and maintain those. So you’ll view them in GPMS and you’ll maintain those through your regulatory reporting to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission which Lezah has touched on and will be viewable in GPMS. So you’ll complete a form like that change in circumstance form that was mentioned and once processed that contemporary information about your organisation or your personnel will be available to you through that portal. 

We’ve also made some improvements and we’ll be able to touch on a couple of those improvements in the Manage Your Organisation tile and the functionality that you’ll be able to see there. We’ve really heard a lot of feedback from providers and identified some key areas to really simplify the end user experience in that space. So some good news there accompanied by continuing familiar reporting across quality indicators, 24/7, Quarterly Financial Report and all of those different mechanisms that you’re used to, and our usual supporting lines across the Contact Centre as well as through the different channels that you interact with us including state and territory networks. 

So that is a quick whip through those key changes and a lot of what is staying the same across registration, access and managing your organisation. And with that I will jump through into that little sneak preview that I promised. So as you’ll be aware the Department has been progressing digital delivery in line with the data and digital roadmap for the staged digital implementation of the Act. While this will be revisited as touched on by Brian earlier in today’s session, it does mean that we are positioned to start to share a bit of the work that we’ve been doing and progressing in the background to have our systems ready.  

I should caveat – and there’s a little one there on the screen – but I should caveat that some of this is subject to change particularly minor matters of layout or wording may change as we continue to refine it up to go live. 

So you will login as I’ve touched on and login using your myID or your Vanguard which will be aligned to that one registered provider as I’ve touched on, and then authorised users will be able to see the Manage Your Organisation tile which you can see there in a little image on your left. And once in the Manage Your Organisation application you’ll be able to see five tiles across provider details, residential care homes, branches, responsible persons and contacts, as well as associated providers. 

And once we jump into those – and given that this is just a quick high level run through today, we’ll jump through to the next slide. 

And here you can see three of those five tiles. And so when you look through these you have the provider details and really there you can see a selection available across the top of the page. You can select the first tab to view organisation details such as ABNs and corporation and parent holding company details. Select the second tab to view registration details, the third tab to view provider contact and address details, and the fourth to view specialist aged care programs delivered by your organisation. When you jump through into that second and middle tile that you can see on your screen you’ll be able to view a list of residential care homes that your organisation has and you can view the ones that are authorised to you as a user. You’ll be able to use the filters and some of those improved features that I mentioned to refine the lists and jump into a little bit more detail about the residential care home that you’ve then clicked on. 

And then if we jump through to the third. And I should say sorry in a little bit more detail you’ve got things like your responsible persons, your points of contact, your personnel profiles. And then if we go through into the branches on the right there you can see that there will be a list of branches under your organisation. You’ll be able to search for the specific branch and view the details including points of contact, personnel profiles as well and manage the contacts for that specific branch. 

Jumping through to the next slide. 

These are the last two tiles that I mentioned. So you’ve got your responsible persons and contacts and you’ve got your associated providers. So the responsible persons and contacts are always an area of interest and in particular where we’ve been able to make some of those layout improvements as well. So here you can view your key contacts, your responsible persons and points of contact associated with the registered provider, the residential care home and the branches. You’ll be able to manage those contacts and you’ll be able to search for specific individuals as well as viewing their profile. And so here you can really see that we’ve put a lot of effort into understanding and reflecting the feedback from providers to ensure ease of use. So you’ve got a simple layout of those personnel along with clearly ticking or marking their role as a responsible person as a point of contact. And then enabling you to click on there and get a pop up that displays their full profile. So that is a really, really nice feature and improvement to the layout that no doubt will be helpful to all providers. 

And then jumping through to the final is associated providers. And a very similar sort of list view that here you can see your third party organisations turned associated providers, view the list of them, search for specific associated providers and view their details, and of course this tile is available again where relevant access has been permitted for a user. And that will be a very important feature to walk through and then we’ll provide a lot of SOPs and guidance material to help providers to ensure that they have in place from 1 July. 

So that is a quick run through of the system and really just stills of our system that’s been developed in the background and really simply presents what is a huge amount of work as you’d all be aware to translate everything that is the current approved provider, GPMS and system and the information that that holds into a seamless registered provider view in a way that’s easy and accessible and simplified to use from day one. 

But as I said there will be more information to come, lots more information sharing. And if we jump through to the next slide it will show you in a moment when it clicks through you’ll see a list of the new guidance materials that we’ll be planning to release and what those will entail. I can’t see that the slide’s clicked through but I’m hoping that it has or will do shortly. There we go. So we’ve got the frequently asked questions, we’ve got quick reference guides, we’ve got user guides, we’ve got fact sheets and we’ve got videos. And so all of these will have slightly different purposes that are laid out on the screen and I won’t detail for you today but they’ll all be released very shortly and in an iterative way that’s intended to ensure that you have all this information available to you well in advance of commencement. And I think this additional time is really going to help to ensure that we can get that out to you early and you’ll have plenty of time to absorb it all. And of course if you still have further questions then do reach out to our enquiry lines and we will ensure that we update resources and that we respond to you. 

Jumping through to the next slide before I hand over to my colleague Amanda Smith. So as I’ve said there is more to come but you can see from this QR code that guidance materials have already been drafted and are readily available. We have detailed guides. We have data models that were touched on by Marguerite and we have a range of resources that are ready to use for providers. They’re really intended to help you to understand the changes to GPMS, the associated processes that come with those changes, to use the updated GPMS and access further information and support. We will continue to communicate with you through our normal newsletter channels, through webinars, through emails, particularly where you will be subject to specific changes or where you’ll be a new user to GPMS. We will ensure that we reach out to you directly to make you aware of that. And of course we’ll continue to be on these Tech Talks and a regular feature here to make sure that we’re always bringing you the latest in terms of changes, system updates and the resources that are available to you to help you to be ready for the commencement of the Act. 

So thanks so much. And I will hand over to my colleague Amanda Smith. Thanks Amanda.  

Amanda Smith: 

Thanks Emma. And good afternoon everyone. My name’s Amanda Smith and I’m the GPMS System Owner on the digital delivery side of the new Aged Care Act. So we’ve been working in close collaboration with Emma’s team building those nifty screens that she just gave us a sneak peek of. Look I’ll keep it really brief today as Emma’s update was really comprehensive. But as the IT nerd I am I wanted to quickly zoom us out to a macro view of the wider aged care ecosystem and the level of complexity that we’re actually all operating in.  

As you may know GPMS manages aged care provider data but however it does not exist in isolation as you can see here. GPMS is part of a much larger integrated and complex ecosystem with four critical points of integration with external systems. With the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission’s  ACCMS system for all provider regulatory compliance and registration processes, with Services Australia’s ACMPS system to provide all the invoicing and payment processes that enable providers to submit invoices to be paid, with the Aged Care Gateway to enable clients to receive service updates and validate that appropriate care for the provider they select have been approved in line with the new legislative changes, and lastly with the selfservice portal which enables providers to manage all of their organisational information using the digital capabilities that Emma just walked us through. The self-service portal also enables the ability for providers to submit all of their regulatory and compliance information such as the quality indicators, Quarterly Financial Reporting and registered nurses 24/7 as well as viewing your star rating as calculated by GPMS. 

So as you can see wow. It is a very complex environment that we all navigate and operate in. Emma and I will continue to keep you at the centre of our planning and designing so we can build a robust and stable system to support the sector’s transition to the new Act. And that’s it from me. Back to you Brian. 

Brian Schumacher: 

Thanks Emma and Amanda. Very comprehensive update. All right. It’s that time of the agenda to move to Q&A so I will invite Janine up to the stage to help moderate. 

Janine Bennett: 

Great. Thanks. Appreciate you having me back. I was having trouble finding the mute button there for a second. Okay. Thank you Brian. Thanks to all of our presenters today. Let’s go ahead and bring all of our panellists back to the stage. So we’ll welcome back obviously Brian, Greg, Amanda, Emma, Lezah and Marguerite. And we’ve got a lot of questions queued ready to go so we’ve got a little bit of extra time today for Q&A and I think we’re going to need it so that’s great. 

For my team let’s go ahead and bring down the slide share so that we can see everybody a little better. And I wanted to say a quick thank you to our subject matter experts on standby who are waiting in the background. There’s plenty of expertise both on and off screen today so hopefully we should be able to answer your questions. As always we’ll get through as much as we can in the time remaining. And a quick reminder to raise your hand when I give you the queue that your question is coming up so our stages can find you in the attendee list and then we’ll get you ready to bring you to stage. 

So I wanted to start off with some popular questions. My first sort of stage warning will be for Mark Matthews, Raelene Gill, Tom Reilly and Wendy Atkinson. So Mark, Raelene, Tom, Wendy, if you guys can raise your hand, get ready to turn on your video and audio when we bring you to stage, that would be great. In the meantime I’ll kick us off with an anonymous question. So the first question as I said is an anonymous one and it is: 

Q: Will pension status be available through My Aged Care Services Australia for providers through to the B2G APIs? This information is needed so that providers can determine client contributions prior to providing services so that we can discuss the ability of clients to pay for their services. Or will determination of percentages be available in a timely manner from the Department going forward? Unlikely the delay that occurs at present with ITF determinations. 

Okay. That’s a bit of a mouthful. So give me a yell if you need me to repeat any of that. But is that a question for Lezah? 

Lezah Rushton: 

Yep. So I can talk to that. So means testing assessments are done by Services Australia. So the participant, whether it’s for Support at Home or one of the other aged care programs, will need to lodge an application for a means assessment from Services Australia. Services Australia will notify the participant directly of the outcome of that means assessment but also will make it available to the provider through the Services Australia provider portal. So for commencement of Support at Home we are looking at the ability for Services Australia to do those as quickly as possible so that they are available to providers as they work on transition arrangements and we’ll provide more information on that closer to the time. 

Janine Bennett: 

Great. Thank you Lezah. I’m glad you navigated that long question because I got myself a bit lost halfway through that. Excellent. Okay. So Mark Matthews. Have we got Mark queued to come to stage? 

How are we going team? 

Hello. Mark is that you? 

I think we might have a bit of a connection problem here. So I might just go ahead and ask Mark’s question for him and then if we get Mark halfway through he can jump in with any follow ups. Okay. So the question is: 

Q: Why delay to the middle of the quarter, 1 November? How does that work financially and how do we prepare budgets for this? 

Greg do you want to start with that question and then handball if you’d like to follow up with somebody else? 

Greg Pugh: 

Yeah. I’m happy to do that. And there’s also a couple of others. And sorry if I’m going out of your preferred order. But I think there’s some here that go to 1 November, the budgets, and then also the delay around providers not being ready and the Commonwealth etcetera. So I might try and knock all those over in one hit. So no. This is not about the Commonwealth not being ready. This is a deferral for the sector, for Government, and all of our delivery partners to make sure everything is absolutely right. This is what I said at the start. We have heard loud and clear through our various forums that people simply needed more time to be able to adjust to a reform of this size and be able to implement it. So that is the primary driver behind the delay. And we’ve got evidence to back that up through all of our pulse surveys, our consultation and again through all of these forums and groups. So again that is one of the primary drivers behind this delay. 

We also had very strong advocacy from some quarters of the sector, so from the peak body in Ageing Australia, from software vendors, but also from our older people and advocacy organisations that on balance a deferral was necessary. So we absolutely took all of that strong feedback on board when providing that advice through to Government to make that decision. 

Just in relation to the budgets and reporting question I’ll take that as Support at Home specific. We already cater for providers joining partway through a quarter and we do that through pro rating budgets etcetera. So the same rules are intended to apply as it does to a new start date of 1 November. So I hope that answers the question. 

Janine Bennett: 

Great. Good that we can knock over a few of those ones there. Thanks very much Greg. Okay. The next question was from Raelene Gill. Can we try and bring Raelene to the stage? We’ll see how we go with that. 

My team can you just let me know. Feel free to jump in with audio if we’re having technical problems in the background. 

Online Participant: 

Hi Janine. We’re having a few technical issues with bringing people to stage so we may just have to revert back to you reading them out unfortunately. 

Janine Bennett: 

All right. No worries at all. See how you go. If it starts to look like it’s going to work we can retry later. Okay. So Raelene’s question was: 

Q: As a provider we do not use GPMS but we’re set to be using it on the 1st of July. We haven’t even seen the platform. Will we have to wait ‘til November to see the GPMS or will we have access from July? 

Emma I’ll direct this one to you. 

Emma Cook: 

Thanks Janine. And thanks for the question. At this stage GPMS will take effect in line with the commencement of the new Act. And that will be important because that’s when all of the registered provider structures and entities become legal and become operational. So that’s when they will all come into effect. In saying that we will be doing a lot to reach out to you directly and to make sure that you are familiar and prepared. And those things will include direct email from us. We’ll also have as I touched on a range of support materials but in particular you’ll find useful, or if you’re anything like me you’ll find useful, a lot of videos that we’ll have. And that will walk you through step by step how to perform normal tasks, how to set up your organisation, what that will look and feel like so that when you’re provided with access from day one it will be much easier for you to be familiar and know the order of priority steps that you need to take and be able to do that with confidence in using those resources. But that access will be granted from 1 November. Thanks Janine. 

Janine Bennett: 

Great. Thanks very much Emma. Okay. Moving on. So Tom’s question was: 

Q: When will the contribution percentages for participants be released, communicated to clients and providers? It was originally set to be 1 July. Will this still be the case? It would be amazing to know this figure ahead of 1 November implementation. 

Lezah is that a good question for you? 

Lezah Rushton: 

Yep. I can take that question. So thanks for your question. In terms of the contribution percentages they are already available to you both through the Support at Home Program Manual but also through the fee estimator that has been published on the My Aged Care website. The fee estimator allows a participant or a provider to enter income and asset information, their current status in terms of whether they’re a Home Care Package recipient today or whether they’ll be moved to Support at Home, if they were a Home Care Package participant, whether they were before the 12th of September, and based on those variables it would return where they sit in that percentage scale in terms of likely contributions against everyday living and independence. 

If your question is really to what is the exact amount of money that an older person would contribute to a particular service under Support at Home again as I answered earlier that would be requiring them to submit that means assessment to Services Australia. Services Australia will notify those people currently in the home care system prior to commencement of the program of what that means. The actual funding amount will be relative to the prices of particular providers, and as you know providers will be setting their own prices initially in the Support at Home program. 

Janine Bennett: 

Great. Thanks very much Lezah. Okay. Our next question represents a number of questions that we’ve received and this one comes from Wendy Atkinson. 

Q: Could you please confirm the status of changes to the reporting of CHSP dataset to commence July 1 2025 in light of the delay in the implementation of the new Aged Care Act to 1 November 2025? 

And there’s about five other questions that sort of hit on a similar topic so we’ll just see if we can address all of them in the one stand. Greg is that a good question for you? 

Greg Pugh: 

It’s a good question for me. For the benefit of this group though there is a webinar specifically relating to CHSP changes that’s being held tomorrow at two o’clock. So if you don’t have access to that link just Google CHSP webinar. It will come up on the Department of Health website. Make sure that you register and you can get all these specific questions answered there. 

But in the interests of not trying to kick the can down the road for 23 hours there are a couple in there around the changes from 1 July, relative changes to 1 November relative to what’s happening in the manual so I’ll try and go through a couple of those. So in relation to 1 July CHSP changes there will be program changes that continue from 1 July. They will relate to recording My Aged Care IDs, updated service catalogues, child safety annual statement of compliance and a few other bits and pieces. There are also DEX changes from 1 July. I think Brian went through that earlier in the presentation. The new CHSP service catalogue structure will change. That will include some terminology changes, so the names of many service types and services. The inclusions and exclusions will be defined and clarified for some services and the new CHSP service list will align with what’s under the new Aged Care Act and the Support at Home program. 

Just in relation to the manual, so with the deferral of the Act there is a schedule to have the interim manual released by the 30th of June. This will be accompanied by a summary of changes document and that will set out clearly what’s new and what’s changed. The chapters in the manual with program based changes will also be called out in a highlight box for easy reference and that interim manual will be in the same format as the existing 2024-25 manual. So there will be a main manual and then there will be a bunch of accompanying appendices. 

So again just to note that dedicated CHSP webinar tomorrow at 2:00pm. Please make sure you join that if you’ve got further questions. It should also satisfy the other question that I can see in the chat around wanting to make this forum more CHSP specific. And that is an excellent suggestion but there is one tomorrow that you should be able to get more immediate answers on than the next version of the Tech Talk. 

Janine Bennett: 

Great. Thanks Greg. And appreciate you hitting a bunch of those questions at once because we did have a few related to CHSP. Next question is a technical question. 

Q: Is there any way to bulk upload your associate provider details in GPMS? 

Amanda Smith can I direct that one to you? 

Amanda Smith: 

I’m not sure. That’s quite a detailed question. I’m not sure I know that one off the top of my head. I’ll just throw to my partner Emma and see if she can answer. 

Emma Cook: 

I can help you from the design side and I know that Amanda equally has me from the technical IT side. So the good news is that really we’ve done the heavy lifting in terms of what most providers will need to enter for associated providers, and that’s because third party organisations will travel with their parent registered provider and ABN across to that new view of a registered provider and associated provider. So if it’s a third party organisation it will travel across. Now from there or if you’re starting from scratch as a new registered provider at this stage there is not a bulk method to report to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission on associated providers. So you’ll need to follow that process. And if these are known – again like Greg just picking up a couple of extra questions in the chat. If these are known or familiar to you at this point, so they are already a third party organisation but perhaps you haven’t stored it in GPMS against your approved provider at this stage, you can do that now. I mean I’d suggest that it’s a good time to do it. Is to jump in through GPMS, do those forms now to report your third party organisations and ensure that those are up to date so that you’re having to do less at that point of commencement and they’re coming across seamlessly. But from that point onwards you’ll continue to maintain them using those Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission forms. Thanks Janine.  

Janine Bennett: 

Thank you. Thanks. And apologies for putting you on the spot there Amanda. Okay. Next question. 

Q: If a participant had a lower level package prior to 12 September ’24 and later gets upgraded to a higher level package in 2025 does the no worse off principle still apply for the participant? 

I think this might be a Lezah or Greg question. 

Lezah Rushton: 

Yeah. I can take that one Janine. So just to be clear the no worse off principle applies to contributions. So it applies to a participant’s contributions if they were in a Home Care Package Program or approved for a Home Care Package and on a waitlist on the 12th of September 2024. So that date’s a really important date. So if the no worse off principle applies to those contributions for that participant and they are later assessed and they are assessed to a higher level package they will have a reduced contribution rate. So again that is explained in the Support at Home Program Manual so I encourage you to go and have a look at that. But yes. An existing Home Care Package person will never pay more than they do today under Support at Home. 

Janine Bennett: 

Great. Thanks Lezah. And while I’ve got you there we have another question around Support at Home pricing. 

Q: Won’t the uploading the Support at Home pricing schedule one month before transition confuse clients? 

Lezah Rushton: 

So again it’s a transition period. So we do have quite a detailed provider transition guide. We did release a copy of that I’m going to say a week and a half, two weeks ago with a number of tasks in it. It needs a further update now to recalibrate it for the November date. So there is an exercise to do because we have to have that pricing available on the 1st of July but we recognise there’s a period of time for providers to go and do that data work that I talked about in the My Aged Care Portal and we’re going to need a few days for them to do that. So whilst it’s an activity that needs to happen in the month prior it is not a month prior. And we will manage that very clearly through communications about where that information is published and that it’s about Support at Home when that program commences and separate to Home Care Packages. 

Janine Bennett: 

Great. Thank you. Greg this one we’ll direct to you. 

Q: Do you feel that there has been enough support offered to tiny providers? 

This person says their head is exploding about what they will need to scan and attach for each service for our HCP clients. There is more and more services provided each month from suppliers like Lite n’ Easy, goods, continence aids, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Are you able to give any advice on that one?  

Greg Pugh: 

Yeah. Probably the advice is please get in touch with us outside of this forum. We would love to be able to provide dedicated support to you and any other providers who are facing a similar situation. I think one of the real benefits of having this deferral period is that we can undertake even more active outreach to the harder to reach provider cohorts than what’s already been undertaken. So please email via the Tech Talk website or just email me directly and we’d love to talk to you and be able to help you some more. 

And that goes for anyone on the call who’s experiencing similar. 

Janine Bennett: 

Yeah. Excellent. So at the end of the Tech Talk we’ll have an email address that you can use. That will also be the email address that’s used to send the post event information out to you. So feel free to use that if you need to get in touch with us. 

Okay. We have a couple of GPMS related questions which I’ll put to Emma and Amanda. So the first one is: 

Q: There is currently a 20 July deadline for registering associated providers in GPMS. Is there going to be a new deadline now that there has been a change? 

Emma Cook: 

Thanks Janine. Yes. So associated providers as I’ve said will come into effect following the commencement of the new Act and that will be to commence from 1 November. So at this stage the best thing that you can do to prepare is if you have third party organisations as I said and if they relate to your approved provider as it stands, get those in place now and it will be a lot smoother run and one less thing that you’ll need to do in that 1 November period where we know you’ll be moving quickly to update your associated providers if required. Thanks Janine. 

Janine Bennett: 

Great. Thanks Emma. And another one for you. 

Q: Is it true that registered providers will need to register associated providers in GPMS to be able to claim the work they’ve completed? 

Emma Cook: 

It’s very topical, the associated provider content. And so associated providers and reporting of those is critical and is aligned with the new legislation. So it is important that all providers are fulfilling their obligations to report associated providers. And as I touched on from 1 November you will need to do that using the forms that the Commission makes available. So they will have those new regulatory forms available and you will complete those forms, and once processed they will be viewable. So the information for all those associated providers and for your entity as it changes following completion of a regulatory form will be displayed back to you but won’t be completed in GPMS. So a couple of nuances in there but I think the message is clear that associated provider reporting is really important you do that now for third party organisations and you will do it from 1 November using Commission forms and you will view that information in GPMS. Thank you. 

Janine Bennett: 

Thanks Emma. And we’ll go for the trifecta. One last one for you.  

Q: Can you please confirm that Service Delivery Branch is the new name for outlets? If not can you please provide a clear definition? 

Emma Cook: 

Thanks very much Janine. Look I’d suggest that we probably want to issue a proper clarification and response in relation to this. In the new Act the term Service Delivery Branch will replace Notified Home Care Service from section 9 in the 1997 Act and that’s also known simply as a Home Care Service. So the name change is to avoid confusion between aged care services and home care services but does not represent any intended operational changes for providers. In saying that and as was touched upon and quite important in Marguerite’s presentation we’re conscious that providers are absorbing a lot of change and a lot of use of terminology across different data models and different systems. So I’d suggest that we provide a more formal response in the form of a Q&A to this group that covers off those technical aspects as well as the legislative change in definitions. 

Janine Bennett: 

Sounds great. Thanks Emma. We’ll give you a break now. Marguerite this one I think might be for you.  

Q: Why have you redefined PPE, the program payment entity? Our sector has a relevant definition for the acronym and using it again for a different purpose is just confusing. PPE, personal protective equipment. 

So it looks like we’ve got some reuses of the acronym there. 

Marguerite Gandini: 

Thanks Janine. I’m not sure that that one is actually me. I think I might have to defer to my policy colleagues. I don’t think that that’s a definition that Support at Home, as in ACG itself has specifically created. But I might have to defer and see if either one of my colleagues on the stage whether it’s GPMS or a Support at Home specific. It may even actually be new Aged Care Act. But it’s defined as a program payment – so the Service Delivery Branch is what’s defined in the Act as I understand it and it’s a type of program payment entity. I don’t know that the PPE will be used largely in the system. That’s just in the communications and in the material that’s been developed to support some of the comms and change. But I don’t know Emma or Lezah if there’s anything further that you can add to that. Otherwise I’m happy to provide a little bit more information on that just to clarify if it needs to. 

Janine Bennett: 

Does anyone want to jump in on that one? 

Emma Cook: 

I think it’s a worthwhile point to make and certainly there is a lot of complexity and a lot of acronyms and terminology as we know, and so while best efforts are made not to duplicate medical or health or broader acronyms these things do occur. And I think what we can do is both look at the opportunity through our communications not to use that acronym because it causes confusion. So we can definitely take that on board, weave that into our communications, and then of course look at in future where we can minimise the use as well as clarify our data dictionaries and terminology which I know we’re seeking to do. 

Janine Bennett: 

Yeah. Sounds great. Okay. The next question is about the APIs for Services Australia. So I know there are a lot of questions in the sector around this. It says: 

Q: Will an API for testing the bulk claims CSV be released? If so when can we expect this? Will it be June, July, August, September or October? 

Lezah are you in a position to answer that one? I know you’re in close contact with Services Australia around this stuff. 

Lezah Rushton: 

I’m going to assume this question has been asked at the weekly webinars for Services Australia. This person may attend them or may not but it does get asked almost every week. So Services Australia are working on increasing access to testing tools as they move forward. They do have some dependencies on things like – we were just talking about data models. Data models are very important. APIs are kind of the end entity for Services Australia in terms of how those data models align. So there’s a lot of work happening in that space but we are working with Services Australia to look at what we can make available in terms of more testing capability both from a portal perspective and an API perspective. So it’s kind of watch this space. The Services Australia webinars have moved to fortnightly. So we didn’t have one this week. We’ll continue to have them fortnightly. So we will give further updates in that but we will also release information on the Health website and potentially in this forum as well when further API testing tools become available. 

Janine Bennett: 

Great. Thank you. Services Australia are also regular presenters at Tech Talks and to our sector partner group and we will continue to have them along to these forums to keep us updated on the latest information. Just noting that they had a conflict today and weren’t able to join us on this particular occasion. 

Lezah Rushton: 

Janine before you move on to the next question seeing as we are talking APIs I might use this as an opportunity to plug in a sense. So I know there’s a bit of a narrative moving around about the CSV files and for those providers who may not have had the time for a July implementation to be able to consume the APIs and meet the conformance requirements for Services Australia systems, and those providers were looking at the CSV files as a potential workaround option. I would strongly encourage, as will Services Australia, that if you are going to use B2G as your long term solution that you should put your effort into the APIs and the API integration, not the CSVs. And Services Australia will prioritise those over the CSVs. CSVs is kind of really supporting almost a manual claiming process. So if you do have time within your development lifecycle to be thinking about that I would strongly be urging you to work with Services Australia to enable you to consume those APIs. 

Janine Bennett: 

Thank you very much. I think that’s going to be a very popular message from everything we’re hearing from the sector. So I don’t have an emoji button but if I did you’d get a big yay from that one Lezah. Great news there. And I think really good advice that we actually put the time now that we have it into the longer term solution. And I know that many vendors were crying out for that so that’s great.  

Okay. Next question is for Greg. 

Q: When will the new Agreements be sent out? Many community health, allied health agencies have not received one even though they are current CHSP providers. We’ve asked our CHSP account managers and they tell us they are coming. Is there a reason we don’t have them already? 

And that’s a question from Carolyn. Thanks for the question Carolyn. 

Greg Pugh: 

Thanks for the question Carolyn as well. I don’t have an immediate answer. I’ll refer you to the CHSP webinar tomorrow but I will try and get a holding reply in parallel. 

Janine Bennett: 

Great. Thanks very much. Okay. Brian. 

Q: When will we see the refresh delivery dates for the digital roadmap? 

Brian Schumacher: 

It’s a good question. As I mentioned at the start of the session, our delivery roadmap, the capabilities that were sitting in that bundle that were expected to go live end of June, start of July, we’ll be moving those to 1 November. So in terms of the date for those deliverables that will be 1 November. Then it comes down to the items or capabilities that were sitting in that October to December timeframe. We’re currently doing an assessment to see of those capabilities what can we also include in that November timeframe. That’s expected to take a few weeks to get through that assessment validation and then begin to communicate that. So we’re looking sort of a few weeks before we get that information out.  

Janine Bennett: 

Okay. Great. Thanks Brian. We do have our sector partner meetings fortnightly and once we have that information available we will take it to the sector partner meetings. The decks from the sector partner meetings are publicly available on the Department of Health and Aged Care website so if you’re keen that’s one place you can watch out. Otherwise we will definitely be covering that at our next Tech Talk as well. 

Okay. The next question is around Quarterly Financial Reporting. 

Q: Are you planning to fix the QFR portal? Currently when we use the Excel template to resubmit data the original Excel template remains in place and deletes the newly uploaded Excel template, thus the data is not updated. 

This has happened for the last two quarters for this person. Emma should we start with you for that one? 

Amanda Smith: 

Or I can jump in and save your back this time Emma.  

Janine Bennett: 

Could you? Yeah. Thank you Amanda. I’m not doing well with the targeting of the GPMS questions. Over to you. 

Amanda Smith: 

No problem. It’s a team effort. Look this one does sound a bit like a defect. So it would be really good to get some further details from the people that are experiencing this and we can follow up with our production support team in the background and make sure that we get it resolved is the advice my SMEs are giving. So maybe if we could make sure to connect with those people Janine. That would be great. 

Janine Bennett: 

Yeah. Fantastic. So again there will be an email address at the end of this session. Feel free to write us there and we’ll make sure we follow this one up with Amanda for you. Thanks very much. And while we’re talking GPMS we have a question. 

Q: Is there going to be improvements to the 24/7 RN reporting portal to reduce the number of clicks required to submit a report for a service that has no gaps? Can we not report it on an exception basis? It is currently a bit mind numbing, time wasting as part of the monthly process. 

Amanda Smith: 

I’m happy to go first if you like and I’ll throw to Emma. Because we don’t currently have plans to be doing enhancements to the UI as part of the 1st of November release. But I would say we do welcome your feedback. We do want to hear any issues with the design or user experience that people out there are having so that we can certainly roll that into future iterations of enhancement. But Emma was there anything you’d like to add? 

Emma Cook: 

No. Look I think that’s absolutely right. At the moment like everyone we are focused on absolutely what is critical to support implementation of the Act from the commencement date. We will over time look at opportunities as Amanda touched on to enhance, and one avenue that is worth looking into and we know that increasingly is gaining significant interest both from software vendors and aged care providers are the B2G capabilities that are intended to support 24/7 reporting. So we do have APIs available from the Department to support that more streamlined reporting direct from your own software system, your own computer, because we’re aware that providers wanted to see those efficiencies and spend their time delivering direct care. 

Janine Bennett: 

Great. Thank you. And while I’ve got you two guys on the hook there’s a question around: 

Q: If we don’t get access until 1 November how are we supposed to register our associated providers? 

Are we able to clear that up for folks? 

Emma Cook: 

So if you are becoming a registered provider from 1 November and you’re not already an approved provider – because we’ve covered that a couple of times in this session – then you don’t really have a legal basis on which to be registering an associated provider. So prior to that commencement date you could certainly look at the forms that will be made available in advance by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, accessing those forms, completing those forms, and having those forms ready to go. But you really won’t have an opportunity to register an associated provider or complete that kind of relationship and form lodgment prior to the commencement of the new Act when that concept comes into existence. 

Janine Bennett: 

Great. Thanks very much. Okay. Moving on. 

Q: We’ve been told that all clients must have assessments by 1 July even though the reform date was pushed to November. Wondering if the technology currently exists to allow DEX to talk to My Aged Care portal to validate this requirement? 

Not sure if this is a Lezah or a Marguerite question. 

Lezah Rushton: 

So I think this was relating to CHSP. So some current recipients of CHSP program were not subject to an assessment so they were going to require an assessment as they move forward on that program to bring that program under the new Aged Care Act. So I’m not clear on whether that date moves with movement of the commencement of the new Aged Care Act but we will take that on notice. I suspect that will be covered in tomorrow’s webinar as well but we can come back to this group with a response from the policy team on that. 

Janine Bennett: 

Yeah. Great. We’ll be sitting in on the webinar tomorrow and capturing any answers as well. So we might be able to just forward some resources to our audience so that they can do some of that research after the webinar if they’re not able to attend. Okay. 

Q: In the Support at Home program claim and payment business rules guide, page 28, BR4. 

Someone’s done their reading. 

Q: It states providers would require a mechanism to indicate a final care management claim for the end of the quarter. Does this mean we need to change the wording at the end of the month to say this is the final care management claim or we wait 60 days for the rollover to occur? 

Lezah? 

Lezah Rushton: 

Okay. So the claim may happen in the following quarter because it may take some time for a provider to have reconciled all of their service provision and pay invoices and the like. So a provider does have 60 days to settle claims including their care management claims into the previous quarter. What we need is for a provider to notify Services Australia when all of the claims for that quarter are settled so that we can work out whether there’s a rollover figure to the next quarter and what that rollover figure looks like so that it feeds into what that pool looks like for the following quarter’s claims. 

So there are going to be things happening concurrently across that claiming process. It’s not a linear process because we recognise that providers will need time to settle their own financials and some of those claims will lag into future quarters but it’s against their budget for that particular quarter where the services were provided. 

Janine Bennett: 

Great. Thanks Lezah. Okay. We have a question. 

Q: The implementation of Support at Home has been delayed to apparently help providers to prepare. How are providers supposed to prepare when they never receive answers to their questions? 

So we’ve got some comments there about the Commonwealth not being ready and providers will never be ready unless they receive the information they were supposed to have on 1st of July. Greg I might handball this one to you. 

Greg Pugh: 

Thanks. Happy to take the question. I see that the never is underlined in the question and it comes from someone anonymous. So I’ll probably take it as more of a gratuitous comment than actually a question given that we are sitting here answering all of your questions. So if you think there are things that are unanswered feel free to flick them through to the email address that comes up at the end of the session and more than happy to take you through anything that might be missing. 

Janine Bennett: 

Great. Thanks Greg. And noting there are a lot of questions. This is a big change. We do everything we can to answer any of the questions that you bring to us. Obviously there’s a lot of them coming through and we try and prioritise those around the things that are of most concern to the sector. 

I think we’re going to call it there just in terms of time but I have noted there is a question about ongoing problems in accessing PRODA and RAM and a question about whether there’s a contact email and phone number for anyone that would be able to help with that. And I hear in your comment that it’s a source of distress for your teams. You’ve had staff in tears trying to figure it out. So let us take that one offline. We’ll find a contact number for you for that one and we’ll make sure we include that in the post event email. So my team can you just make sure we take a note of that one and that we get an appropriate contact. 

Okay. Well that was a marathon Q&A. I want to take a second to just thank Greg and Amanda, Emma, Lezah and Marguerite. Really appreciate you putting yourselves in the hotseat. I know it’s not always easy particularly at these times of change. So big thank you to you as our presenters and also our panellists today. Thanks very much. 

That’s it for our Tech Talk number 24. As always we appreciate your interest and participation. We will go through the questions that we haven’t gotten to today and make sure that we come back to those ones that are obviously of hot interest to those in the sector. As always we love to hear your thoughts. There is a post event survey. The QR code for that is on screen at the moment. We use that survey to plan our upcoming segments. And so we really do read those responses. We hope that you’ll provide your thoughts and give us some hints on what you want to discuss in these events. We’ll make sure and get the recording of today’s event fast tracked to you especially given that we know our session was fully registered today and not everyone was able to attend. 

For those of you that are here please take a moment to register for our next webinar which is coming up on the 29th of July. You can use the QR code also on screen or select from the list of links in the chat to go ahead and register for that next webinar. And with that I will hand over to Brian who can take us out for the day. Thanks Brian. 

Brian Schumacher: 

Thanks Janine. It was great to see lots of good questions today. I really enjoyed the chance to be part of this as I mentioned. So that was my first session for Tech Talks. The intent is to make sure that we keep updates coming through so please make sure that you can stay engaged with us here at Tech Talk. And with that thanks everyone for attending and goodbye. 

[Closing visual of slide with text saying ‘Thank you!’, ‘Tech Talk post-event survey’, image of QR code, ‘Register for Tech Talk 25’, image of QR code, ‘Australian Government with Crest (logo)’, ‘Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’, ‘DTDDEngagementOffice@health.gov.au’] 

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