Digital Transformation Tech Talk – 27 August 2024

[Opening visual of slide with text saying ‘Australian Government with Crest (logo)’, ‘Department of Health and Aged Care’, ‘Tech Talk webinar series’, ‘Digital Transformation for the Aged Care sector’, ‘Digital Transformation and Delivery Division, Corporate Operations Group, Department of Health and Aged Care’, ‘health.gov.au’, ‘Tech Talk 18’, ’27 August 2024’, with photograph of an aged-care services worker and recipient and the moderator connecting via videoconference and visible on the right-hand side of the screen]

[The visuals during this webinar are of speakers connecting via videoconference and visible on the far right-hand side of the screen, speaking with reference to the content of a PowerPoint presentation being played on screen] 

Janine Bennett:

As always we’re here to talk digital transformation for the aged-care sector. My name is Janine Bennett and I’m the engagement lead for the department’s digital transformation program and your moderator for today’s webinar. 

I’m joining you today from the lands of the Ngunnawal and the Ngambri people. So I’d like to recognise those Traditional Owners, as well as the peoples and families with continuing connection to the lands and waters of this region. I pay my respects to their contributions to this country and to their Elders past, present and emerging. As well as to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people joining us today. It’s great to have you with us.

Thank you everyone for joining us today. For those of you who were with us last month you might recall that we mentioned moving from Webex over to Microsoft Teams as our new platform for webinars. That didn’t actually pan out today. It’s still very much the plan. But today we’re sticking with Webex while we confirm a couple of items around the configuration of Teams. We want to make sure when we move over to that new platform that it supports our audience in the best possible way. So we’ve got a few more checks and balances to get in place before we run in the Teams space.

A quick refresh on our usual housekeeping items before we get started today. So for our Tech Talk frequent flyers everything is just as you remember it from all of our previous webinars. If you’re joining us for the first time a couple of things for you to keep in mind. Phone dial-in numbers are on the slide that’s on screen now and they’re also in your meeting invite. If you come across any connectivity issues you can use those numbers to rejoin. We are recording today’s session as we always do, so that we can publish and share it after the event. It usually takes a couple of weeks for us to get that up onto the Health website. 

We’re keeping an eye out for your questions to answer in today’s Q and A. You’ll notice that Slido has been launched. Your questions about our digital transformation work are always great and they really add to the value of these sessions. So we look forward to hearing your questions today. Asking the question is super easy. Just look for the Slido panel. As I said that’s down on your screen, usually in the bottom right-hand corner. You can use your phone also with the QR code that you see on screen now. That will get you on from your mobile device. Go ahead and post your questions at any time throughout today’s session. If you see a question from someone else that you like the look of, go ahead and give it a thumbs-up. 

And as always if you are willing to ask your question live on our virtual stage to our panel directly, we’d like to invite you up. To do that just make sure when you put your question in that you include your name. When the time comes I’ll give you a bit of a heads-up before we bring you to stage. From there you just need to turn on your audio and video and you’re good to ask your question to the panel. 

A quick reminder. As I said the webinar is recorded. So your name and image will appear if you come to stage to ask a question. If you’re feeling camera shy today, no problem at all, I’ve got you covered. Put your query into Slido either anonymously or just write ‘no stage’ when submitting your question and I’ll ask the question to the panel on your behalf.

Okay. Keeping in mind that our focus here at Tech Talk is on our technology and delivery work. We’ll answer the questions wherever we can today. Noting there may be times when we need to take a question offline to consult with other areas in the department or to make sure that that’s information that is cleared for us to publicly share. 

In this same vein, a quick reminder to anyone with formal media enquiries. Those should go to the department’s media and events team at news@health.gov.au. They are the best-placed people to come back to you to assist with formal media enquiries. But we’re really happy to have any media folks in the room today and thank you for your interest in our work.

Okay. That’s it for housekeeping.

Before I hand over to our host today I wanted to mention a few late changes to the agenda. We know it was very last minute but we have made the call to defer a couple of our planned presentations today which will mean a reduced run-time for today’s webinar. We’re expecting we’ll run about an hour, so from 2:00 to 3:00 instead of to 3:30. That should give you some time back and hopefully that’s a welcome addition to space in your calendars. I know we always appreciate it on our side when we get out of a meeting a bit early. 

To briefly explain the reasoning behind the change in agenda, we gave some careful thought to our line-up and decided that because of some important aged-care legislation which is currently in the hands of Parliament that it made the most sense for us to defer a couple of the planned updates. We do expect to cover these items at our next Tech Talk. Or depending on timing we’ll consider whether we need to do a targeted Tech Talk session when those decisions come through and we’re able to talk about those. 

So for the agenda items today we do have a focus on our digital transformation work. On the delivery side we’re between releases at the moment. July’s now well behind us and the October release is still about a month or so away. Our host, Fay Flevaras, will take us through her usual digital transformation update showing some of those latest updates in the delivery roadmap, giving us a bit of a preview of the October release. 

We also plan to answer some popular questions from past Tech Talks like we’ve done in previous sessions. And we’ve set aside time in a shorter session for Q and A. And we’re grateful to have Greg Pugh from the Reform Implementation Division here to assist us with the panel and those questions. So thanks Greg in advance for being here later in the agenda.

Really grateful for your understanding of the late agenda changes. As you can imagine it’s a really critical time for us as we await some really important government decisions before we can dive into some of our future work phases with you in a later agenda and we’re looking forward to being able to do that. 

Okay. So on that note it’s my pleasure to introduce your host for today, Fay Flevaras. As many of you would know Fay leads the department’s Digital Transformation and Delivery Division, bringing her extensive experience in leading transformational change to her work here at the department where she’s heading up the delivery of digital solutions to enable aged-care reform. 

So welcome Fay. And it’s over to you.

I think we’ve lost your audio. 

Fay Flevaras:

Okay. Everyone has –

Janine Bennett:

There you go.

Fay Flevaras:

Yeah. I’m back. Everyone has to do that once in a while, right, start talking with the mute on. Welcome everyone. For all of our regulars, thanks for joining us. And for everyone who’s joining us for the first time it’s good to see you all. As always I’ll start with some context about the work that we are doing. 

Briefly we’re in the business of digital transformation. My own division builds technical solutions that enable aged-care reform. We’re one part of a larger reform program. And we work with other experts, with policy colleagues, delivery partners, the sector and with a range of other stakeholders to execute on this large and complex reform agenda for aged care. The government’s aged-care reforms began in 2021 and will continue to at least I think, based on what we know, to 2025. So we’re all kind of well on our way and in the middle of it.

So far we’ve developed a range of digital solutions to support a broad suite of reform measures. Here at Tech Talk we often feature our bigger platforms like My Aged Care Gateway and our new tech developments around a Government Provider Management System which we often refer to as GPMS and our Business to Government Gateway which is our B2G. It’s also worth noting that we’ve built and are building growing functionality across these platforms all the time. And we’ve already deployed care minutes, star ratings and nursing 24-by-7 and more functionality already and there’s also a lot more in the pipeline to come. 

All taken together, we’re delivering real-world outcomes for people. We’re trying to build a better-connected, modern and digitised aged-care ecosystem by removing red tape and streamlining business processes and access to information and these services. We’re enabling higher-quality care for older Australians, giving them the dignity and respect that they deserve. 

And when I say ‘we’ I’m referring to the large group of dedicated people working day in, day out to bring these solutions to life. It’s my own ICT delivery engine, a big team of people that come together. It’s our business colleagues in the policy areas and digital implementation reform areas. All of whom often feature at these Tech Talks and co-present so you get the full end-to-end view of what work we’re doing and how we’re doing it and why we’re doing it. And many of you in the sector who work with us to co-design new functionality are also working hard to work with us to make these solutions happen, but also to digitally mature in your own organisations. So the work we talk about here is one part of that big, collective effort across both sector and government. 

So there’s a bit of a quick background of all the work we do and why we do it. So let’s move on to today’s agenda.

For a couple of quick news updates on our program I’ll start by saying thank you to everyone who contributed to our Business to Government Gateway ’s recent survey. Which amongst other things asked for input from the sector on which APIs would bring the most value to them. We had over 140 responses. And we noticed a significant increase in responses right after we shared the survey link with our Tech Talk audience last month. So if you played any part in that, thank you for taking the time to share your feedback. It’s really important to us to understand what you guys find valuable and what will benefit you the most, to help us with the prioritisation of what is in the roadmap for B2G and what’s next. The B2G team is currently working through the survey results and we’ll have them back in the upcoming Tech Talk to take you through the findings. 

In other news it’s a bit of a congratulations again to the GPMS team, this time for winning the Digital Workplace Award in the Most Impactful Digital Transformation category. This award recognises the adoption of digital technologies that drive efficiency, accessibility, scalability and user experience. It also looks to groundbreaking digital solutions to shake up the establishment, like projects that have brought around radical change or revolutionised processes or metamorphosized into a digital butterfly. That’s some nice imagery there folks. 

For anyone who worked in the old NAPS system I think you can agree that GPMS put us firmly on the path to a more modern and integrated and user-friendly digital experience. We’ve developed this solution in close partnership with the sector and delivery partners, particularly our sector partner group who participated in many design sessions to design the foundations of GPMS and also some of the new policy initiatives that launched on it such as star ratings and quality indicators. So this award belongs to all of you as well. We have a lot of work still to do to build our new functionality but the hard foundational work has been recognised and this was a proud moment for all of us.

On another very exciting GPMS-related-ish update, earlier this month the National Approved Provider System, or NAPS as we knew it in the past, was fully decommissioned. For over 20 years NAPS served as our tool for managing provider information. Like a lot of legacy platforms NAPS was a complicated piece of technology. And it was a really big undertaking to unpack and transition from NAPS to GPMS and what that exactly meant. This decommissioning is a big milestone for us. So thanks and farewell to NAPS. We wish you well and enjoy your well-earned retirement. And now our focus is on continuing to build the capability into GPMS for the provider experience and to leverage the new functionality as we offer it.

Lastly I just want to touch on the policy landscape right now for aged care. The government is working with the opposition – actually, no. I’ll move to the next slide actually on this one folks.

Thank you.

Give me one sec folks. I missed a beat here. There we go.

So I think I’ll move to our roadmap first before I get into that piece. This roadmap is a forecast of the work that we currently have planned to the end of 2024. I share this with my usual disclaimer. And it’s really important this is our technical delivery roadmap, it’s our digital delivery plan. Now more than ever it is important to note this timeline supports the aged-care reform agenda but it should not be considered an official commitment from government. That happens elsewhere outside of our Tech Talks and usually through Ministerial announcements and other formal mechanisms. But we want to share this roadmap early and often to be transparent and open with you about what we’re working on and what we’re planning for. But be aware sometimes things do change, policy decisions evolve, priorities shift. And when this happens we’ll call it out here so you know. 

With this being our last major release for the year I’ll take a selective look back through those grey boxes showing what’s been delivered so far. Some of the things that I like to zoom in on that have been more noteworthy examples were in April we released our first APIs onto the Business to Government portal, followed by a further two in July. So that puts four APIs out there in the sector for you guys to leverage. We delivered the new Integrated Assessment Tool for use by the assessment workforce. That one has less direct impact for most people in the audience but is a big step forward for our assessors. And we also have made changes to various reporting tools, including the 24-by-7 registered nursing reporting and our quarterly financial reporting. 

I also want to point out one of the items yet to be delivered, the Manage Your Organisation tile for GPMS. This used to be called the GPMS Self-Service Portal. It was planned to go in July, but as yet we’ve yet to launch it or to go live. Our teams are prioritising just a number of production items and putting those into a new delivery pathway before we can confirm the release date, an upcoming release date. We’ll keep you posted on that informed announcement on the new date. We just wanted to make sure that we’re a hundred per cent okay with all of the data and the functionality before it’s released to all of you to leverage.

So that’s a little bit of a where we’ve come from and some of the good things I think we’ve delivered so far this year. Now let’s look ahead to what’s coming up in October and December.

So far what we’re planning and building towards right now, there’s a couple of things to highlight. We’re making changes in the Single Assessment Workforce. This change will support the new production system and will be operational from the commencement of the Single Assessment Workforce going live. This will include the removal of existing workforce entities that do not continue into the new Single Assessment Workforce arrangements. These changes include renaming of some of the assessment organisations to reflect the new SAW, some of the organisational data we need to set up to reflect new contracts, and enhancements to an integrated assessment tool to improve decision-making supports for the assessors. 

Moving down a little bit there’s changes that are being made to the My Aged Care hospital portal to support the single-assessment model by allowing staff to have access to information about a patient’s aged-care services, and approvals to determine the patient’s need for an aged-care assessment. To enable this change there’ll be a third data upload of the remaining hospitals and outlet organisations data for the My Aged Care hospital portal, so just continuing that journey. 

The My Aged Care Hospital Portal is a channel for hospital workers to access the My Aged Care information rather than relying on informal arrangements or verbally with aged-care assessment teams. Hospitals will now have direct access to the My Aged Care records, enabling them to quickly determine whether a patient can be safely discharged, and refer an existing client to a hospital assessment without the need to register the client as the current inbound referral form needs to happen today. Hospitals will also be able to begin to realise efficiency gains, including through improved response times with clients and increased data accuracy for prompt decision making. So looking forward to that change. I think a really important one to help move seamlessly between arrangements in the aged-care facilities and to hospital and vice versa. 

My Aged Care and My Health Record is also another area that we’re focused on. We would like to integrate these two arrangements. We’re delivering some new functionality in October 2024. This functionality will enable client support plans to be shared from the My Aged Care platform to the My Health Record with a person’s consent. So in another first, as it’s the first time a Commonwealth department is sharing information with My Health Record, this is a foundational step in connecting government, health and aged-care systems to improve the continuity of care for older people. It improves the person-centred-care decision making and reduces the amount of time a person needs to tell their story because we’re sharing the information that we’ve already gathered from the My Aged Care to the My Health Record system. This directly responds to the Royal Commission’s recommendations around aligning the aged-care data and the digital strategy and the Commonwealth digital blueprint to the government’s commitment to drive interoperability around and across healthcare systems. 

So you can see other deliverables are there too. I won’t deep dive too much into those. We’ve got lots more in the October release and we’ll explore some of those in our next Tech Talk together.

Okay. Now to touch on looking ahead a little bit. Our regulars will always be aware that we’re normally trying to show a 12-month horizon for our digital roadmap. At this stage we’re unable to provide this pending some of the government announcements. So I did want to take a moment to kind of just quote our official position at this stage around some of the New Aged Care Act and Support at Home announcements. 

The government is working with the opposition to secure bipartisan support for the New Aged Care Act. That work is in the hands of the Parliament as we speak. If agreement can be reached the Aged Care Bill will be introduced to Parliament in the spring sittings, with the government’s response to the Aged Care Taskforce report and the final Support at Home program design. Subject to Parliamentary processes the New Aged Care Act will commence from the 1st of July 2025. 

We’re committed to the introduction of the bill to set the foundation of aged care in Australia for years to come. And we’ve heard from many in the sector that they need more time to prepare for the major transition to the Support at Home program. We will provide information in time to ensure that the sector can prepare for the transition process for older people currently participating in the Home Care Package Program and the Short-Term Restorative Care Program. Current residential and in-home aged care will not be affected by this delay. All current aged-care services will continue and the Charter of Aged Care Rights still applies. 

So I thought I’d bring this front and centre at the beginning of this Tech Talk, knowing where we’re up to. And for those watching closely you might have also seen a recent exchange between a journalist and the Prime Minister answering the question as to why negotiations on the aged-care reform are taking so long. So I thought maybe I would raise that proactively, noting that I think we’ll probably get some questions on it. 

This is what the Prime Minister had to say. And so I’m kind of paraphrasing a little bit. He thought it was a very good question and that the industry is asking themselves that as well. He said ‘We know that for aged care in the aged-care industry and for people we will all get older, and more Australians are getting assistance in the home rather than in aged care as aged-care residents. That’s a good thing.’ He acknowledged that we need to make sure that the system is viable and sustainable going forward. And that we have worked with the industry, we’ve worked across the Parliament as well, ‘and as far as I’m concerned the legislation to fix aged care needs to get done as soon as possible’. He also said that they await the final agreement but discussions have been constructive. And as far as he is concerned ‘I’ve reached a conclusion’, and that there is a broad agreement about what is required in the interest of a sustainable aged-care sector going forward. 

So that is the formal word we have on the progress of those bigger decisions that will influence our future roadmap. I thought it was worth some time bringing it up proactively here. And as soon as those decisions are made and we’re in a position to share more we absolutely will.

Okay. So moving right along. We often get more questions in our Q and A than we can answer in any single session. We’ve usually got more on the agenda. So today we’ve introduced a re-occurring agenda that we sometimes put in where we reflect back on some of the popular questions we didn’t get to. We’re taking the opportunity to respond to a couple of outstanding questions today. I thought maybe Janine you might want to pop up and get a few rounds of a quick-fire Q and A with me so I’m not up here on my own. Janine are you there?

Janine Bennett:

Now I’m doing it Fay.

Fay Flevaras:

Yeah. That’s okay. All right. 

Janine Bennett:

Turn the mute off. We’re good to go. Yes. 

Fay Flevaras:

Excellent. 

Janine Bennett:

Great. Okay. So our first question. 

Q:          Will there be a My Aged Care update so providers can view all service referrals, not just those in the last 12 months?

Fay Flevaras:

And the answer to this one is absolutely yes. The capability is now in place already. So just to give you a bit of background, this was always our original intent with a 12-month window into – let me get my tongue-tie open. So it was always our intent, with the 12-month window introduced as a temporary measure. 

Following the release we found that some performance degradation issues were occurring sometimes where our clients had a really long history. And so to protect the whole platform and against performance issues, we made the decision to limit the default service history to 12 months, with an advance filter which allowed people to search further back in 12-month blocks. 

Since then the temporary measure has now been rolled back since we’ve been able to implement some resolutions to solve those performance issues. And so that temporary change was introduced in release 30 which was early July, and then we’ve rolled it back in late July in our release 30.1. So hopefully that helps. If anyone’s still having any issues please reach out to us and let us know.

Janine Bennett:

Great. That’s a good-news story. A nice one to kick us off. 

Okay. Our next question, if we can move along to the next slide, is about quarterly financial reporting.

Q:          Where can we find the QFR template file?

Over to you Fay.

Fay Flevaras:

Excellent. For those who are unaware we offer a template of data collected for quarterly financial reviews. You can find a non-uploadable template on the department’s QFR resource page by going to this – what do you call it – icon there. I’ve forgotten its name. 

Janine Bennett:

QR code.

Fay Flevaras:

Thank you. QR code. Noting that the template on this website is offered as an example. But when a provider logs into the QFR application on GPMS there is another Excel template that they can download, enter their own data and then upload it back up. So we’re hoping that this template helps to make it a little bit more efficient for providers. 

The template is customised to each provider. So you really need to be able to login and download your version. The QR code will take you to the example non-uploadable template so that you’ve got some resources to see what the template looks like and to get a bit more information. We’ll drop a link into the Q and A for quick reference, or use the QR code on the screen. So thanks very much for that one Janine. What have we got up next?

Janine Bennett:

Great. Well that’s actually it for our questions from the last session. So good to knock out a couple of those outstanding questions. And in line with our shortened agenda that brings us to Q and A time. So today we have the dynamic duo panel with us. So Fay if you can stay on screen. And we’ll invite Greg Pugh to the stage. 

Fay Flevaras:

Hi.

Janine Bennett:

Greg hi. I might just start by having you introduce yourself and your role if you could.

Greg Pugh:

Thanks. My name’s Greg Pugh and I’m the First Assistant Secretary of the Reform Implementation Division in the Aging and Aged Care Group. Thanks for having me along today. 

Janine Bennett:

Thanks Greg. Awesome to have you with us. We also have some subject matter experts waiting in the wings in case they need to jump in. So a quick thanks to Amanda Smith and Marina Muttukumaru. We’ll give you a yell if we get any curly tech questions and need to phone a friend. 

But just to begin now I might start by giving a screen warning to Stefan, to Nancy and to Jack. That will be the first group of people we’ll invite to the stage if we could. And so if our folks in the background can bring those guys to get ready to come to stage, that’d be great. 

But we will just start by addressing a tech issue that Nona raised in the Slido. So a couple of attendees look like they might be having issues with audio settings. If you can hear me or if you’re seeing this in the transcript, I suggest that you dial in on the phone line. So maybe you can keep the phone line and the video connection going and you might get the full experience that way. I think the majority of us are able to hear. So yeah, check your audio settings first. And then if you have no luck use the dial-in phone line.

Then we’ll start with an anonymous question. So this first question Fay you already answered but I think it’s worth just reiterating in case anybody missed it. 

Q:          Are there any differences between the proposed GPMS Self-Service Portal and the upcoming GPMS Manage Your Organisation tile?

Fay Flevaras:

No. I don’t think there are. We just renamed it. The self-service portal was actually an internal project name as it’s already – the portal is GPMS. So it’s not like we’re introducing a separate portal. So we’ve renamed it to be what it is, so that when it launches onto GPMS everyone knows that it’s one and the same. It’s your ability to get in there and manage your own data.

Janine Bennett:

Great. Thank you very much. 

Okay. So we might go ahead and bring Stefan to stage if we could.

Audience Member:

Thanks Janine. 

Janine Bennett:

I’ll just give Stefan a minute to jump in. Hi. How are you going? Welcome.

Audience Member:

Good thanks. Stefan from Hall and Prior. I’ve got a very simple question I guess.

Q:          I just want to know is there a process for providers to gain access to the newly-written APIs? And also as they get released to the providers how do we get into that program? 

Janine Bennett:

So a great question for Fay. And you yell if you want us to bring Marina in Fay.

Fay Flevaras:

No. That’s perfect. You can add her in if you want. So over the last few Tech Talks we have presented our Business to Government Gateway functionality. It’s been launched. Simply you could go to developer.health.gov.au. That is the B2G portal. On the portal there it has all the instructions on how to get started. It talks about what our conformance process would be on you as a provider who would like to connect. And then you can go through that. And it takes a little bit of time to go through the conformance process. You do need to sign up to us to meet some obligations around security and privacy. We also ask you to demonstrate how you’ve actually connected. So that’s where you can get access to the APIs in a test environment and really just start your API journey with us. So I might get the team to drop that somewhere in the Slido, the link. But yeah, developer.health.gov.au. Did I get that right? We can always bring Marina up if she wants to add anything to that. I always like putting the team on the spot.

I don’t know if they can get her up in time.

Janine Bennett:

Yeah. I’m not sure. We’ll see how we go.

Fay Flevaras:

That’s all right. Stefan did we –

Janine Bennett:

There she is.

Fay Flevaras:

There she is. 

Audience Member:

Perfect. Thank you very much.

Fay Flevaras:

Did you type that in the background? Did you have a go?

Audience Member:

Yeah. I made a note. We’ll see how it goes. In the meantime, with the other questions I’ll ask I’ll quickly check and I’ll pop it in the Q and A session.

Fay Flevaras:

No worries. Marina was there anything else we needed to add?

Marina Muttukumaru: 

I think you covered that perfectly there Fay. But Stefan if you have any trouble feel free to reach out to myself or the team. And I’ll put some –

Audience Member:

Thank you very much.

Marina Muttukumaru:

– emails in the chat as well.

Janine Bennett:

We can funnel them through to you Marina. 

Marina Muttukumaru:

Thanks Janine. 

Janine Bennett:

We’ll let you know on the next slide everybody what the contact is. And anything that comes for Marina just mark it up, we’ll make sure she gets it. Thanks so much Stefan. A good question. 

Okay. So next we’ll invite Nancy to stage. So Nancy had a question about IAT.

We’ll give Nancy a minute to arrive and get her camera on and audio going. How are you Nancy? Can you hear me?

Fay Flevaras:

Nancy I think’s putting an IT request in.

She may not be able to –

Janine Bennett:

I might go ahead and just ask the question on her behalf because I think we’re having a little bit of trouble getting the audio and video for that one. Okay. So the question that Nancy had – here she is. Hello.

...

Janine Bennett:

Yeah. We can’t hear you. Can you hear us? Yes. Okay. I’ll ask the question and you give me the thumbs up if I’ve got it right. 

Q:          As a representative of an assessment agency we’re currently not using the IAT app due to functional issues. Are you able to comment on when a fix may be applied?

How was that Nancy? 

...

Fay Flevaras:

So Nancy this is where I probably need one of the other team. I’m not sure what existing issues are. Greg did you want to – you put your hand up, no, on that one? But I do know that if you’ve got – no, let’s start again. I’m not sure what existing issues are on the app. I’d have to take that one away. I’ll get your name so that we can contact to make sure that we’ve got a contact detail for you to reach out. I’m not sure if you’ve already logged a request with our service delivery team. So I’ll just try and close that loop and we’ll get back to you. How’s that? 

Janine Bennett:

Thanks very much Nancy. I appreciate you alerting us to that and we will definitely take that one offline and come back to you. Have a great day. 

Fay Flevaras:

A bit tongue-tied today. Sorry folks.

Janine Bennett:

Okay. Next we’ll bring Jack to stage if we could.

How are we going there with Jack?

Unidentified Male:

We weren’t going to bring Jack to stage but he might be available to ask a question.

Fay Flevaras:

I think he said ‘no stage’.

Janine Bennett:

Okay. Apologies. I missed that one. All right. So the question is:

Q:          Which clinician services currently utilise the My Health Record? Will hospital access to My Aged Care be utilised by private hospitals? They typically discharge the older person and leave ACAS assessment for the community at a much later date.

I’m wondering if this might be a question for Greg.

Fay Flevaras:

...

Greg Pugh:

Getting myself off mute. Look so I think there has been a little bit of criticism around My Health Record and its uptake in the general community. So I think to the extent that we can make sure that we are improving uptake across the board of that, then that would be a good policy outcome. As far as I understand it hospital access to My Aged Care can be utilised by private hospitals. But I would have to go back and triple-check that. And yeah, your point taken about they typically discharge the older people and they get an ACAT assessment later on in the piece. Like that is a known issue.

Fay Flevaras:

Thanks Greg.

Janine Bennett:

Great. All right. Thanks for that Greg. Hopefully that answered the question that we had there. 

All right. So next we’ll queue for stage a couple of new participants. So if we can invite George and Steven Knight as well and then Anne. We’ll get those folks all queued up.

I’m just checking to see if we’ve got any anonymous questions we can ask in the meantime. It doesn’t look like it. Yes, there is one. Okay. 

Q:          Could the loadable templates be made available on a first page so that we can download them all at once?

I’m thinking the loadable templates might be the ones you were referring to earlier Fay in the popular questions. 

Fay Flevaras:

The QFR one is the one I referenced. The Excel template has been set up with locked and merged cells as well, so to make sure that the data is entered and uploaded correctly in the fields. I’m not sure and I’d have to check but I think not everyone has access to all the templates. So when you say ‘downloadable’ each function is assigned as a permission to users. And so I’m just not sure that’s the way it’s been set up. We can take that as a bit of feedback and put it with the teams to have a look at. But at this stage the person who has access to the function or the tile is the one that has access to download it. That’s my understanding. But we could always change it and put it in a resource area. Thanks for the feedback.

Janine Bennett:

Thanks very much anonymous. Okay. I’ll bring Steven to stage next if I could please. Do we have Steven ready to go?

Audience Member:

Good afternoon. Can you hear me?

Janine Bennett:

We can. Hi Steven. Nice to have you with us.

Audience Member:

Thank you. I’m not sure if you can see me or not but no matter.

 Q:         My question is all about FHIR. With the announcement that the ADHA are commencing the buildout of My Health Record, converting that to being FHIR enabled, what does that mean for the My Aged Care record? Is the integration going to be based on FHIR between the two?

Fay Flevaras:

So at the moment my understanding is that the [plan] in its entirety is just being put into My Health Record as an evidence base of the [plan]. So as such I’m not sure it’s breaking it down into all of its FHIR elements. But I do know that we’ve got George coming up soon as well. He’s got a question about FHIR. What I can say is we are aligned to the strategy around My Health Record going to the FHIR standards. And that where there’s clinical information that is being sent in its individual data elements, yes, we will adopt the FHIR standards. So does that answer your question Steven? I just think the [plan] itself goes as one asset piece though.

Audience Member:

Okay. So it sounds like the [plan] is really going to be pretty much almost like a notes-based to text [plan]?

Fay Flevaras:

I will double-check on that. I wonder if – I’ll double-check on that in the background while we’re talking and come back with an update. My understanding, I think it was the actual [plan] itself, like almost a PDF that’s going in to go ‘here it is’. 

Audience Member:

Yeah. Excellent. Thank you. 

Fay Flevaras:

But I’ll get the team to check and we’ll give an update shortly on the call. Thanks Steven.

Janine Bennett:

There you go, live updates in session, that’s not bad.

Fay Flevaras:

I know ...

Janine Bennett:

No pressure Fay. Quick. You’d better get that one written in.

Okay. Next we’ll invite George to stage. Hi George.

Nice to have you with us. 

Audience Member:

Hi everyone. Thanks a lot. And thank you Steven for starting to ask the question about FHIR. 

Q:          I guess my key question there is around Daniel McCabe in a recent podcast noted that FHIR is being utilised a lot more in healthcare, but also the ability of the new community of interest around FHIR. So is there plans to develop those same communities of interest in aged care as well? And in particular for the vendor community what do they need to know about FHIR now so they can get ready for standards-based clinical information systems in the next few years?

Fay Flevaras:

Thanks George. So all of the four APIs that we’ve put out onto the B2G platform today do follow the FHIR standard. So we’re already fully aligned with that. So we have already made sure that we’re using the FHIR standard version that they’re doing in – what are they calling it over there – Spark, their program –

Audience Member:

The Spark program.

Fay Flevaras:

– with CSIRO, correct. There are some extensions we’ve made, to your point around aged care, where it’s not covered in the FHIR standards today. And we’ve published those and we’ve developed them in our codesign sessions with the public already. We have also handed those extensions, from an aged-care perspective, to the FHIR team that’s over in the CSIRO so that they can prioritise that as part of their next stage or the next phase of their interoperability agenda. So as much as possible I think we’re trying to stay aligned, noting that we’re running fast and we’re already putting things out in production. 

So as I said if you guys can have a look at what those API definitions are already on the B2G platform and give us some feedback around those standards, great. Happy to extend an aged-care community if that’s what you guys would like. Absolutely happy to do a community around FHIR standards for aged care so when we build the next wave of APIs we stay all conformal. 

Audience Member:

That’d be great, yeah.

Fay Flevaras:

Your thoughts on that?

Audience Member:   

Look I think that’s the key thing is those communities of interest. The Spark group has been very healthcare focused where they’re recognising the intersection with aged care. So if we can actually develop the additions that we need for aged care, standardise them and make them publicly available I think there’s an opportunity to take a market-leading position. So congratulations on that initiative. 

Fay Flevaras:

Thank you. I appreciate that. But we always welcome the feedback. And we will reach out to the Spark team and maybe get an update on when or if we get prioritised for the next phase. 

Audience Member:

Yeah. Hopefully we can get you on the podcast coming up too soon Fay.

Fay Flevaras:

Thanks George. 

Janine Bennett:

That sounds great George.

Fay Flevaras:

Just a slight plug there. 

Janine Bennett:

You’re like a reporter on the move George with the background.

Audience Member:

Well I’m literally in between meetings. I’m actually at the local rail station. 

Fay Flevaras:

We’re keeping it real.

Audience Member:

But I never miss a Tech Talk.

Fay Flevaras:

Thanks George.

Janine Bennett:

Thanks George. Appreciate it. 

Okay. Next we have Anne. Can we invite Anne to stage? And she has a question for Greg.

Hi.

Audience Member:

Thanks Janine. And firstly congratulations Fay. Not without a lot of hard effort to get those awards. And we really do appreciate and note the difference between then and now in terms of the tech development and advances. So well-deserved awards.

Fay Flevaras:

Thanks Anne. It takes a village. So I’ll pass on the thanks to everyone else, including Greg and his team who are our counterparts. So yeah, we’re all pretty proud of it.

Audience Member:

Thank you. But my question is Janine to Greg.

Q:          Greg one of the most critical issues in the field is standardisation of data collection as you well know. And I think there’s been some recent work where the compelling case to get that foundation right is evident and not able to be disputed. I guess there’s been also the recent work that was done to look at the assessment globally about what is working and what’s successful. But I just wondered from your perspective could you give us an indication of what’s on the horizon of consideration? Because there’s a groundswell that if we don’t get this right now, we’re just perpetrating the problem. So it’s a really critical and important issue. Thanks Greg.

Greg Pugh:

Look from a policy perspective I couldn’t agree more. I think the reporting burden that you want to put on providers, but also onto the older people, needs to be as close to zero or as minimal as possible. That is an ideal future state. 

I think the thing that we’ve been grappling with since the Royal Commission is around how do you make sure that the significant government investment that’s going into the sector is actually matched by a return on reporting that we’re meeting some of those requirements such as 215 care minutes and 24/7 nursing and the like. So there is a balance that needs to be made. 

But there are pieces of work that have been undertaken since the Royal Commission response and going forward. So a couple of those things include the development of the National Minimum Dataset. So we worked closely with the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare to prepare what the core standard set of data that should be collected and reported on in a very specific way should be. And that’s now published on the AHW’s Meteor site. It’s not perfect. It does only at the moment cover data collections that were at a specific point in time. But there are future iterations of that NMDS that will come along. And there is also a consideration of the role that interRAI and other such globally-accepted data collections will play. 

So that also comes into the conversation around the aged-care data and digital strategy which I think you would be familiar with. I know some of my colleagues have reported at this forum previously. And there was also the launch of that strategy back at the start of July at the ARIIA conference. But some of the core principles and the guiding objects of that strategy and the action plan that sits underneath it is exactly that. Making sure you’re collecting once using multiple and making sure that the impost on providers and people is as low as possible. 

So there is a recognition of that issue and there is work underway to address it. I think just where we are at the moment though is making sure that we can report on the policy outcomes that have accompanied that significant government investment and we will just streamline that over the coming years. 

Audience Member:

Thanks Greg. I think we’ve got compelling international evidence and experience that Australia could learn from and we’ve tried to detail that. So thank you for your response.

Janine Bennett:

Thanks very much Anne. Always good to have your questions. 

Okay. So we’ve got some additional questions that I’ll run through. 

Q:          Firstly, thank you for the upload function for QFR. Can we expect the same for ACFR upload? 

Fay Flevaras:

So in my mind we’re working with our policy colleagues to go quarter, quarter, quarter, you get to an end of financial year and then you’ve got an annual one which is the annual financial reporting. They’re quite separate at the moment. The ACFR is actually on a different system. But we’re working with our policy colleagues to bring it across onto GPMS. And in doing so hopefully make that, on the topic we just talked about which is the ‘tell us once’, which is the annual financial reporting, you won’t have to re-enter what you’ve already put in for the quarterly. We kind of sum it up for the annual piece and then we’ll ask the extra questions. 

So could we expect the same for ACFR? I think so. It would be the delta questions, not the information that we’ve already collected for QFR. So hopefully that’s the aim of where we’re going around the design principles. But we’re still working it through with our policy colleagues. Because they really do need to, as Greg said, do a bit of a review of what’s all the data we’re collecting and kind of streamline that a little bit. Also with the New Aged Care Act and the new Support at Home arrangements and so forth, we need to look at what’s in there too and kind of update it once for everything. 

Janine Bennett:

Yeah. It’s not an insignificant thing to get that alignment. But then once we have it, it really does hold a lot of promise for efficiency for people who have to do that data entry. I know I would have loved that once upon a time in my career.

Fay Flevaras:

So Janine before we move on I do have an update on Steven’s question. 

Janine Bennett:

Excellent.

Fay Flevaras:

And so it was what I thought. It was PDF. However we do translate that format to what they call CDA, which is the Clinical Document Architecture which is associated with the FHIR standards. And it’s a flexible mark-up standard developed by the Health Level Seven International, so the HL7. And so that’s what we’re aiming for at the moment. So hopefully Steven that gives you a bit more insight. It’s a little bit more than just the PDF, which is a good thing.

Janine Bennett:

Thanks. I appreciate the follow-up on that one. That’s really good. So we have an agreement that a resource area would be a great idea. So that suggestion earlier is a popular one.

Fay Flevaras:

Excellent.

Janine Bennett:

We’d better look into that.

Fay Flevaras:

Yeah.

Janine Bennett:

And then there is also a link that Sanka shared in relation to the MHR usage stats. So I’ll leave that on the Slido list so people can reference that if they’re keen to get that information. 

Okay. Another anonymous question.

Q:          ACAT codes tend to get locked with providers who are assessing their capacity to provide care to a consumer. This means only one provider can access the consumer codes at a time. Will the merging of My Aged Care and My Health Record overcome this issue by making the codes visible across providers? 

Does anybody know the answer to that one?

Fay Flevaras:

Throw to Greg on that one. Does he have an answer?

Greg Pugh:

I was just going to ask some of the tech folk in my team. We’ll have to take that one on notice. I mean I don’t think that it would change that, but I do need to come back to you and provide an answer. Maybe at the next Tech Talk we can give you a better answer to that.

Janine Bennett:

That’s awesome Greg. For my team can we make a note of that as one of the popular questions that we can come back and answer next time. Excellent.

Okay. So we have another couple of anonymous questions.

Q:          Is there or could there be a forum for those of us who do the QFR and ACFR reporting so that we can chat amongst, asking questions and giving each other tips and tricks?

I like that idea. 

Fay Flevaras:

So it’s a good idea. I think that’s one we’ll need to take away. I think we do have our sector partner community. Maybe it’s not that. Maybe it’s something slightly different. Maybe you’d like us to host a community. I think that’s the second one today that I’ve heard. George talking about the community around FHIR standards and APIs, and now we’re talking about maybe a community around QFR and ACFR on getting it right I suppose and helping each other. So we might take that one away and have a think about it and see what we can come up with. 

Janine Bennett:

A nice suggestion. 

Fay Flevaras:

Yes.

Janine Bennett:

Okay. 

Q:          And then will home care have access to My Health Record to minimise resistance from GP-to-provider health information and also to assist in planning care when discharged from hospital in order to improve health outcomes for our clients?

Do you want to have a go at that one Greg?

Greg Pugh:

So that is the end goal. I do not believe that that will be the case for the first round of functionality, but we will get there. That is where we want to get there over the short – over the medium term. 

Fay Flevaras:

Correct. I think we talked about having step 1 is My Aged Care platform providing the [plan] into the My Health Record system. So that’s step 1. Step 2 is then how can we, in the My Aged Care platform, surface up information that’s in the My Health Record. That is step 2 plan. But we have no clear date on where we might deliver on that one but that is the intention. So hopefully that answers anonymous’ question. We’ll keep that one on the roadmap for future enhancements.

Correction on the above: In live event – in this Q&A response – the term Care Plan was incorrectly used rather that the correct term Client Support Plan. The use of Care Plan has been replaced in the transcript with [plan] so as not to cause confusion. 

Janine Bennett:

Okay. And we did have a quick question. 

Q:          Would you mind restating what the PDF will be converted to again?

Fay Flevaras:

Yeah. So just to get it – so it’s PDF format to CDA for transmission. So it’s associated with FHIR. And it stands for CDA is the Clinical Document Architecture which is the flexible mark-up standard developed by HL7. So we can always get that written up and documented in the chat just before we go.

Janine Bennett:

Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you. And then the last question for I think today. 

Q:          So in regard to the statement – I’m guessing this is the statement you made Fay around the New Aged Care Act – there was a question about whether that is published publicly?

And we might refer to our policy colleague, Greg, to take this question. Thank you. 

Greg Pugh:

Yeah. So I mean the comment that Fay made in relation to the Prime Minister’s statement is available was from Monday morning. I believe it was an ABC News press conference. So you should be able to find the transcript on there.

Fay Flevaras:

Yeah.

Greg Pugh:

I’d probably just note as well, particularly at the start of this week and the back-end of last week there was a lot of public commentary and media about it. So you will be able to find more than just that reference. Like there is more than just that reference to the current state of play with the new Act and Support at Home and the taskforce response.

Janine Bennett:

Great. Thanks for that one. I think we’ll take that as our last official question for the day. Just a note that we have had an anonymous friend put in a link for HL7 for the benefit of everyone in attendance. So anyone who is interested in that, the link will stay in the Slido. 

All right. Okay. Well a big thank you to Fay as always and to Greg for joining us for the panel today. Thanks for the excellent questions. And even though we had a shortened time we did manage to get through all of our questions today which might be some kind of record for us. I will also just say a quick thank you to Marina and Amanda who were waiting in the wings to jump in as well. Thanks guys. We appreciate your expertise. 

Okay. That’s a wrap for our Tech Talk 18. As always thanks for tuning in to our much smaller Tech Talk today. We’ll be back to our usual format next time. Please remember to take our survey. You will be able to do so on the way out of this session. There’ll also be a QR code on the current slide. And we’ll include a link to the survey in the email that goes out post-session as well. Even if you’ve completed the survey in the past, we want to know how we’re doing as we progress. So we’re always interested in a fresh take every Tech Talk. So yeah, please don’t hesitate. And a big thanks for rolling with us today with our truncated agenda. 

As always today’s recording will be on the website in the next couple of weeks once the transcripts are done. We’ll let you know as soon as that’s available. In the meantime you have the QR code there, you can get to all of our previous Tech Talks. Feel free to share that and any other resources that we make available with your colleagues, your coworkers and anyone else who’s interested in aged-care reform. 

Okay. Until then that’s a goodbye from me. And I’ll hand over to Fay to take us out. 

Fay Flevaras:

Thanks Janine. And I’ve lost my notes. Sorry about that. So thanks Janine for handing over. And thanks to Greg for coming on and doing the Q and A with me. I really appreciate it. We’ll be back for our next Tech Talk in October as we’re closer to our next release. Any agenda items or topics you’d like to see please let us know. Email us or pop it into the survey. As always a reminder this is an open forum. We love the diversity of views and the opinions we see at these Tech Talks and the feedback that we get from you. If you know others with an interest in the kind of topics we cover here please share them the link to our website. 

So that’s it from us until next time. And thank you for your company and goodbye for now. 

[Closing visual of slide with text saying ‘Australian Government with Crest (logo)’, ‘Department of Health and Aged Care’, ‘Thank you’, ‘health.gov.au/tech-talk-webinars’, ‘Tech Talk post-event survey’, ‘DTDDEngagementOffice@health.gov.au’, with photograph of three aged-care services recipients smiling and waving at camera and the moderator connecting via videoconference and visible on the right-hand side of the screen]

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