Helping make sense of the maze

PROFILE: Aged care placement consultant Dana Sawyer helps arm consumers with independent information to make informed decisions about entering aged care.

PROFILE: Aged care placement consultant Dana Sawyer helps arm consumers with independent information to make informed decisions about entering aged care. She talks to Linda Belardi about the value placement consultants can add to the experience of consumers and to the broader sector.

Personal experience spurred Dana Sawyer into a career change into aged care.

Dana Sawyer
Dana Sawyer

Sawyer, who is now a director of Millennium Aged Care Placement Consultants, says her mother’s move into residential aged care was “disastrous” and complicated by poor communication and misinformation.

“Personal experience is why I do this,” she tells Australian Ageing Agenda.

With degrees in business and psychology, Sawyer teamed up with Jayne Maini, a registered nurse of 25 years, to help others navigate the complex aged care system and to avoid her distressing experience being repeated by others.

Maini and Sawyer purchased the organisation in 2008 from three registered nurses who had established the company in 1999. Maini and Sawyer have since expanded the Melbourne-based business to include placement consultants in Sydney, Brisbane, Gold Coast and Perth.

Aged care placement consultants are a relatively new role in the industry and Millennium is the largest placement consultancy services in the country, having placed over 3,500 clients.

Sawyer says her role is to help empower consumers and their families through independent advice and guidance on accessing and moving into aged care. She says a good part of her job is correcting misconceptions, simplifying information and making clear to people the full range of options that are available to them.

“It’s about putting accurate information in front of people so they can make an informed decision based on their individual circumstances,” she says. “It is so vital in a consumer-driven aged care system to give consumers good information so they are basing their decisions on quality information and not fear.”

Sawyer says aged care placement consultants also take on the role of consumer advocate, supporting families through the transition and providing unbiased advice that is not influenced by external pressures such as moving hospital beds or filling aged care vacancies. “We are paid by the client, so our sole focus is on the needs and interests of the individual client. We don’t have to direct them anywhere and we don’t have to work to a particular timeframe either.”

Their role also has significant system-wide benefits by reducing readmissions to hospital, she says. “If a person is discharged from hospital and not placed into an appropriate care option they will probably end up back in hospital.”

And for aged care facilities, they are not wasting their time on clients that are unsuitable for their facility.

She says that by the time a client is ready to view a facility, a placement consultant has already refined their search so they are only inspecting facilities that match a clients’ preferences and circumstances.

“When it’s time to arrange facility tours, they are looking at only two or three facilities – not at 10, so that’s seven facilities that are not wasting their time on a client they can’t help for whatever reason – such as no vacancies, a person’s care needs, finances, lifestyle or religion.”

Sawyer says she is surprised by the amount of time that is wasted on tours and meetings with clients that are unsuited to their facility.

Building awareness of the role and demonstrating the value of an aged care placement consultant has been an ongoing challenge. Sawyer says that hospitals have been slow to refer their patients to the service, despite their specialised knowledge and understanding of the aged care system.

While social workers and discharge planners can assist people to access aged care, she says they are not specialists and they are also very time-poor.

Sawyer says she is passionate about giving consumers “real choice”, especially in the shift to a greater user-pays system.

“It’s very satisfying to know that you have assisted a client to make the most out of this stage of life and that are really comfortable in the final decision they have made.”

Tags: Dana Sawyer, Jayne Maini, Millennium Aged Care Placement Consultants,

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