NDIS in residential aged care provides insight into how CDC might look: opinion
The disability funding arrangements for eligible aged care residents offer a preview of consumer directed care in the residential sector, writes Ross McDonald.
The disability funding arrangements for eligible aged care residents offer a preview of consumer directed care in the residential sector, writes Ross McDonald.
Thanks to the Summer Foundation and others advocating for young people living in residential aged care facilities, the National Disability Insurance Scheme introduced formal funding for NDIS recipients in aged care in September 2017.
More residents are now getting access to the NDIS with funds able to go towards their means-tested fees, rehabilitation and reablement therapies, and access to the community.
This is offering residential providers an insight into what consumer directed care in residential aged care might look like as:
- NDIS recipients have their own budgets
- components of the facility charges get paid for by the NDIS including ACFI and means-tested fees
- specialised external service providers access the facility to service single residents
- boundaries are pushed regarding independence, self-management and accessing the outside community.
It can be a complex albeit workable situation for the NDIS recipient and their representatives.
The complexity is with the financial representative role. The role was created in September 2017 and allows the representative to pay the residential care invoices from multiple funding sources and be registered as a plan manager with the NDIS.
Previously aged care resident invoices were not able to be paid as intended and required either the aged care facility to register with the NDIS and claim or the care recipient paying personally.
Now a representative of the resident can self-manage the plan, or a plan manager who has the capability to deal with the residential aged care nuances and managing personal contributions, pays the residential care facility via one invoice.
Self-management and plan management focus on bookkeeping tasks including making claims from the NDIS via the online claims portal and paying expenses as they arise. The roles include record keeping and creating monthly statements, similar to what providers of home aged care packages do for their clients.
Plan managers who represent NDIS care recipients in residential care:
- receive an invoice from the aged care facility covering all fees
- claim the NDIS components for both the means-tested care fee and the non-means tested daily accommodation contribution
- Collect payments that need to be made personally, including the care fee, any means-tested accommodation contributions and any other personal costs
- pay the aged care invoice, ideally within a week of receipt – NDIS claims take up to two days to process
- receive, claim and pay for the services of additional NDIS provider invoices.
Self-managed NDIS participants do all the bookkeeping task themselves. If there is not the capability, or desire, an NDIS participant can access the assistance of a plan manager with no financial impact to the value of their plan.
The NDIS structure is setting a good example for residential aged care if recommendations for aged care funding to follow the individual wherever they choose to live are realised.
Ross McDonald is the founder of Capital Guardians, a provider of financial management services to aged care and disability operators and recipients.
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Yet another disparity for the aged, what makes people with a disability any different to people who have aged – bring on an equitable system either one way or the other but stop disadvantaging one group over the other. The Government says that elder abuse is not ok and yet it continues to financially disadvantage the elderly through means tested, user contribution based services ( funded from pensions, superannuation and/or assets), while the NDIS has no means test and no user contribution and pays for fees etc with no out of pocket for the client regardless of their or their parents ( where under the age of 18) financial status or asset base. This is not good enough! The common model for insurance is that it has a premium attached and yet it is the aged who are paying the premium not users of the NDIS..
Lets hope the Government sees the disparity and moves to ensure equality for all users of care and support systems and that economists and other commentators can look across the community services sector and make informed comment on funding schemes going forward.
I agree that CDC may be the way forward but it is essential to ensure equity in the planning and implementation.
Lanna, well said. Our government needs to do more for our elderly & stop putting systems in place which disadvantage them.
This just looks like paper warfare.
Seriously anyone who wants to roll out the NDIS model to more people hasn’t lived with the uncertainity it provides and the worst thing is that the uncertainity has no end.
You lurch from
Could someone say what age care homes are meant to provide for the $77 000 that they get per year for the young, from the NDIS? Previously from Health.