Support at Home with Nightingale

In home aged care services support almost one million senior Australians. Research shows that senior Australians want to remain at home for as long as possible before entering a residential aged care facility.

Improved supports in the home would prevent senior Australians from having to enter residential aged care prematurely and against their wishes. If done well, it may mean people don’t need to enter residential aged care at all. Older Australians would be supported to manage the risks associated with staying at home, while the assessment process would ensure that anyone who needs to relocate to residential aged care is able to do so.

Nightingale has been delivering solutions to service Aged Care providers to deliver better care, efficiently and effectively by automating, digitising and providing compliance for many years.

The HCP Program has a history of long wait times, high overhead costs charged by some providers, and high levels of unspent funds. The CHSP has variable service availability by location.

In its response to the Royal Commission, the Australian Government announced a commitment to establish a new Support at Home Program in consultation with senior Australians and community stakeholders. The design of the program will be finalised following sector consultation and detailed model development. The program will address several of the Royal Commission’s recommendations to improve the support for senior Australians to remain independent and in their own homes for longer.

Key themes of the new Support at Home program from a Home Care Provider’s Client Management Software perspective:

Source: *These have been derived from Department of Health and Aged Care guidelines and are subject to change.

Fee for Service (Activity based funding) (ABF) model

New Point of Delivery Payment Platform

Set Pricing Caps- No more Package Management Fee

New Client Leave Calculation rules

Current four HCP package levels subject to change

Possible new reporting requirements

Nightingale is well prepared to make all the necessary changes in the software platform before the new rules become effective. Moreover, the configurable workflows within the platform can already accommodate some of these changes.

Item Description Nightingale Functionality
Fee for Service (Activity based funding) (ABF) model
After delivering service, provider will invoice Services Australia (monthly or more frequently) 1. The persons ongoing services budget 2. The persons short-term supports fund 3. The providers care management fund
Every client appointment is linked to a service item based on a set price-list. An invoice is generated at the same time when an appointment is completed by a support worker. Frequency of billing can be specified by the user. Nightingale also has a robust budget management functionality to draw fund from.
Set Pricing Caps
Providers will no longer be able to charge Package Management Fees
There are dedicated fields to specify Package Management Fees in Nightingale software. Simply make a global setting change to set package management fees to Zero
New Point of Delivery Payment Platform
A Point of Delivery Payment Platform is being developed by the government to enable providers to receive payments in real time, from both government and senior Australians. The Platform would also assist in capturing information from providers about service delivery and their clients, automating reporting on service provision.
Nightingale software has open APIs and we are registered with the various government B2G portals for latest information. We will ensure that there is robust integrations with the new Point of Delivery Platform
New Client Leave Calculation rules
Support at Home would not allow providers and senior Australians to accrue unspent funds, with providers paid as services are delivered. For example, if a person goes on holiday and does not require their cleaning services, the provider would not receive payment for them, and the senior Australian would not accrue their entitlement
Nightingale software will have new leave calculation rules in place to reflect this change
Possible new reporting requirements
With all the new changes, we are anticipating there will be new reporting requirements
Nightingale will provide out-of-the box reports to meet all compliance and reporting requirements.

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