GSO Care Aged Care Software - Simulator

The Funding Gap Differential

“The Royal Commissioners described the aged care system as in ‘crisis’ in late 2019 and independent reports have shown average viability of residential homes has worsened in 2020, especially with the pandemic.

“Counsel Assisting said aged care providers are being squeezed and must choose between financial viability and providing the level of care that’s the minimum standard required to support their residents - an impossible situation.”

A review audit is an onsite assessment of the quality of care and services provided to aged care consumers (consumers) by an accredited service. It measures performance of an approved provider against all requirements of the Quality Standards. Review audits are conducted by an Assessment Team of at least two quality assessors.

Review audits may be arranged with notice to the approved provider of the service (announced) or without notice (unannounced).  

During the entry meeting the Assessment Team request certain key documents. These documents may be provided to the Assessment Team during the entry meeting if readily available but are expected to be provided within one hour of the conclusion of the entry meeting so as not to delay the conduct of the visit.

The Assessment Team also meet with at least 10% of the consumers of the service or their nominated representatives.

A resident’s family members should be actively involved with their loved one. Allied health practitioners should have ready access to their patient’s care data. Both should have real time access to all relevant alerts and alert resolution. The number of family member complaints should be reduced accordingly.

All carers and managers should electronically acknowledge their acceptance of shift hand over data at the commencement of every shift.

All care plan activities should be scheduled and have delivery time tolerances with real time alerts for early or late delivery. All care plan activities should be customised specifically for each resident.

Resident assessments should be scheduled for re-assessment based on two criteria:

(a) There has been an apparent change in the resident’s care needs;

(b) The assessment validity period has expired.

All residents should be constantly surveyed as part of general conversation, regarding their level of satisfaction with recent care plan activities, by carers who were not the giver of the service. Manual audits and data sampling become redundant.

(a) Residents

All carers, nurses, managers, cleaning staff and kitchen staff, be they internal or external agency, must have full knowledge of each resident’s specific requirements, idiosyncracies, culture and life style choices at their fingertips when administering care.

(b) Financials

Each aged care bed should be treated as an individual cost centre.

The onus of carers remembering the current individual care needs of each resident should be removed completely. It is an encumbrance destined to fail and is completely unnecessary.

Reduce carer charting and documentation time. Allow real time capture, and allow the system to flag alerts based on individual resident parameters.

Eliminate the maintenance book by automating the notification via an integrated maintenance application.

Automate the three items above and negate the carer’s need to leave a room for documentation. Every five minutes saved equates to 5 more minutes of care or around $30,000.00 per annum saved for an average facility (90 beds).

Optimise daily activities to spread carer workloads, where acceptable to residents, even across shifts.

Funding

It would appear most providers apply annually for increased funding per resident, only if the documentation can be found to support a claim.

A system should automatically report, in real time, changes in levels of care needs for each resident, based on the fund cycle. (ACFI = 7 days)

Biannual funding increases instead of annual could result in increased funding in excess of $300,000 p.a. for an average facility.

Mandatory Audits

Mandatory auditing should become an integral component of daily care, with discrete, polite and appropriate enquiries prompted of carers regarding recent daily activities, and the resident answers recorded in real time. Therefore, any dissatisfaction may be actioned in a timely manor.

Shift Handover

Shift handover data, relevant to a carer’s role, should be available in real time, and not dependant upon verbal transmission and the availability of supervisors.

Incidents

Incidents (such as falls) requiring immediate additional care, should not rely on the availability of an RN, but should automatically inject clinical pathway activities (based on world’s best practice) into a resident’s schedule, pending further investigation.

Alerts

Any clinical alert (high or low blood pressure, high or low BGLs, skin integrity deterioration, pain, weight loss or gain, urine colour, et al.) should automatically inject clinical pathway activities, based on world’s best practice in the absence of specific MDs directives, pending further investigation.

Imagine reducing the cost of obtaining funding and performing mandatory audits down to one employee, irrespective of the number of residents or facilities. The result would be a saving of over $20,000.00 p.a. for an average facility.

Which is more profitable, a $150 per day bed or a $200 per day bed?  Only by recording each bed as its own cost centre can one know.     

By assessing residents more frequently, it is possible to increase ACFI funding by 7% and more, depending upon the frequency.

The cost to a provider of each family member complaint may be incalculable.  Consider brand damage, adverse media attention, loss of trust and diversion of resources.

Automating the process will reduce wages considerably, by over 80%.

Provide carers and other staff with tools to minimise down time like shift hand overs, allowing a greater percentage of the shift hours for care giving.

Intelligent event driven automation enables hats 1, 2, 3 ,4 and 5.