technology
More than money
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Technology holds enormous potential for delivering better , fairer outcomes for those in need .
Technology key to preventing elderly Australians from going without care .
By Craig Porte
With its budget announcement of $ 1.6 billion for 23,000 additional home care packages to help care for older Australians in their own homes , the government has taken a significant step in the right direction to support the thousands of elderly Australians who need and want to receive care where they feel most comfortable .
The government ’ s funding will also go some way towards helping to relieve the additional financial burden that has come about as a result of COVID-19 . At present , aged care homes are facing a significant hit to their profit and loss statements with the additional necessary cost associated with operating safely during a pandemic .
Yet funding alone cannot address the access issue at the heart of the Australian aged care sector . The problem is that complex and manual processes has often meant those applicants have to wait anywhere from six months to up to a year to access the funding . In the past two years alone , 28,000 people have died waiting for their home care packages to come through .
The challenge for government now is how to support the aged care sector to become more efficient , both in terms of how it allocates funds and how it spends them .
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Current processes and the MyAgedCare Portal which require applicants and service providers to complete multiple forms for and repeat processes for eligibility criteria , assessments and guidelines , hinder timely and critical access to the funding .
The government has set a goal of reducing wait times to 30 days , yet neither additional manpower nor funding will be effective . To ensure that the federal government ’ s $ 1.6 billion for home care packages is able to adequately support a growing ageing population , government must couple this with investment in technology to streamline workflows .
Without cutting a significant chunk of red tape through increased efficiency supported by technology , the government will be throwing good money towards bad processes and more vulnerable , elderly Australians will wait an unacceptable amount of time for much-needed support .
Through Civica ’ s work with many of the service providers who support Australia ’ s elderly , it ’ s become clear that some of the priority areas where technology could significantly improve outcomes include :
• More accurately determining the needs in the community and ensuring the right type of home care packages are being made available in the required proportions . There simply are not enough appropriate packages for those who need them . While the majority of people need level three and four packages , only 10,000 of the packages were funded at this level .
• Providing more visibility of the application process . At present , aged care providers do not receive critical information about the packages and clients until too late , making it difficult to plan efficiently . For example , many do not even know whether the customer will be receiving a level one , two , three or four package and therefore have no insight into the level of care they are
meant to provide and how frequently . By providing more visibility over where the process stands and ensuring more information – such as the physical risks at an applicant ’ s home – is shared between the government and the provider , providers can begin to prepare sooner to ensure the applicant has the care they have been approved for .
• Enhancing the efficiency of the assessment process through standardisation and improved e-referral between business to government is fundamental to improving outcomes . At present there is an enormous amount of duplication of effort , rekeying of data across systems , and manual work involved in distributing packages from MyAgedCare to service providers . This creates unnecessary delays in providing care for vulnerable Australians . Civica has worked with the Department of Health across a number of divisions , including aged care , Medicare Online and the National Disability Insurance Scheme , co-designing API-based solutions that enhance the electronic transfer of information between government and service providers within the health ecosystem .
These partnerships will help to improve the e-referral and business to government processes so that those who are referring patients to MyAgedCare and onto service providers – GPs and hospitals , for example – have a standardised electronic portal for capturing and sharing that information .
As Australia ’ s aged population continues to grow , it ’ s critical we find ways to make sure more people get access to the care they need as soon as possible . Technology holds enormous potential for delivering better , fairer outcomes for those in need – let ’ s use it . ■
Craig Porte is managing director at Civica Care , Asia Pacific .