My Aged Care hampering service delivery: evaluation

Just one in five aged care providers consider My Aged Care helpful to delivering services while more than half feel it has been detrimental to their workload and ineffective in reducing administrative burden, according to a new evaluation.

Just one in five aged care providers consider My Aged Care helpful to delivering services while more than half feel it has been detrimental to their workload and ineffective in reducing administrative burden, according to a new evaluation.

More than two-thirds of consumers are happy with My Aged Care’s match and referral process for services but just over one-third of providers are, according to the findings.

Similarly, consumers are more positive about the information they receive from the My Aged Care contact centre and website than providers are.

The research, commissioned by the Department of Health and Healthdirect Australia, involved over 4,000 people including members of the general public, aged care recipients, carers, service providers and assessors, and other healthcare professionals.

The evaluation was conducted between January and April 2016, six months after the implementation of the second stage of My Aged Care, which included the client record, web portals for clients, assessors and service providers, national screening and assessment form and Regional Assessment Service (RAS) for clients seeking Commonwealth Home Support (CHSP) services.

It found an increase in awareness of My Aged Care among the general public with a quarter of Australians now aware of the helpline and one in five aware of the website, up from 15 per cent and 10 cent respectively in 2015.

Awareness is even higher among the aged care recipients surveyed, with almost half aware of the helpline (44 per cent) and a third of website (30 per cent). However, providers cited a lack of awareness of My Aged Care among clients resulted in them spending additional time helping clients understand funding and service models.

Key findings

My Aged Care DSS 2

Around two in five providers said they were happy with the quality and accuracy of information supplied by the contact centre (41 per cent) and fewer with information on the website (30 per cent). They blamed a lack of specialist knowledge among contact centre staff and consistent unreliable information.

Similarly less than half of RAS assessors said they were satisfied with the quality and accuracy of information from the contact centre and website (both 43 per cent).

However, the majority of care recipients were happy with the contact centre (76 per cent) and website (66 per cent) as were carers, but to a lesser degree (65 and 59 per cent respectively).

For My Aged Care’s match and referral process, more than 70 per cent of consumers were satisfied with how it was implemented compared with only 37 per cent of service providers and 34 per cent of assessors, with unreliable information again cited as the major problem for these two groups.

Almost half of providers said they received appropriate referrals, but a quarter felt they did not.

On My Aged Care’s ability to help organisations deliver services, almost half of CHSP-funded providers able to receive referrals said they were dissatisfied  (46 per cent) while a quarter remained neutral (26 per cent) and only 20 per cent said they were pleased with how it helped.

While just over half of providers felt positive about using the provider portal to check information about their organisation, fewer believed the same about the process of uploading that information initially (42 per cent) or receiving client referrals (27 per cent).

More than half of providers felt My Aged Care hadn’t reduced the admin burden (56 per cent), while a third felt it had improved it to differing degrees.

Providers attributed the increase in admin to poor quality of information from the contact centre, inflexibility in cross-referral and rejections and a lack of awareness among clients of My Aged Care.

In fact, half of providers surveyed said My Aged Care had been detrimental to their workload, and just 13 per cent felt it had a positive impact.

Provider and consumer response

Pat Sparrow
Pat Sparrow

The evaluation has been welcomed by aged care peaks Aged and Community Services Australia (ACSA) and Leading Age Services Australia (LASA), both of which noted the quality and reliability of information as a major ongoing concern for providers impacting on referrals and service delivery.

ACSA CEO Pat Sparrow said the evaluation highlighted a number of deficiencies impacting service providers that could be improved upon and called for a campaign to ensure consumers were better informed about the gateway and ongoing reforms.

“While there has been an increase in awareness of My Aged Care and aged care helplines many people are still not aware of the services available or how to access them. It is often left up to providers to talk consumers through the process,” Ms Sparrow told Australian Ageing Agenda.

“We need My Aged Care to do the work it is designed to do well and this should be a priority for action.”

Sean Rooney
Sean Rooney

LASA CEO Sean Rooney also welcomed the department’s openness about the concerns and its recognition that improvements were needed.

He said there were a number of current issues that providers were finding problematic.

“These include client records being incomplete or inaccurate, and referrals being rejected by providers because they are being inappropriately referred through My Aged Care. There have also been issues with providers disappearing, or unable to be found in a geographic search on My Aged Care,” Mr Rooney told AAA.

Chief executive of consumer peak Council on the Ageing, Ian Yates said it was positive to see improvements in the use of My Aged Care, but the evaluation indicated there was much more to do.

“There is evidently a great deal of room of improvement… I would like to see very satisfied for all measures, across the board for consumers and providers,” Mr Yates told AAA.

See related story Inaccurate client information a problem for RAS: report

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Tags: acsa, lasa, my-aged-care, operational, pat-sparrow, Sean Rooney,

8 thoughts on “My Aged Care hampering service delivery: evaluation

  1. Hopefully this survey will see the Department of Health and Healthdirect commit to improving the services offered by MyAgedCare. In the current state MyAgedCare really serves no purpose. The website is clumsy, and has obviously been developed by a team with no understanding of contemporary UX. Similarly the call centre staff, although polite and cheerful, really have no knowledge of the aged care system. I struggle to comprehend how they can assess a persons care needs without understanding the type or levels of care available.

  2. The call centre staff are doing the best they can. The main issue I have found is not being able to access support plans without the number. Many potential clients forget to keep the numbers, have no idea they need the numbers and if lost it takes a long time to be able to access these numbers again. Not having access to support plans is to be blunt is stupid.
    We need access to patients support plans to see approvals. It also has been forgotten that some elderly and not so elderly DONOT access a computer. Not elderly friendly at all

  3. I agree, the website can be clumsy to use and yes, My Aged care staff are very polite however the right questions need to be part of the screening process and a good knowledge but there are referrals being made too early for the consumer and then we have them sit in the provider portal or assessor portal because the consumer just wanted information and thought they would enrol or their family told them to enrol. Hospitals and doctors need to improve on their use and understanding of My Aged Care as it appears it becomes the role of the RAS or provider to train them, instead, they are informing patients to call MAC themselves which is inappropriate as their care needs are not being addressed upon discharge from hospital and are now having to wait for the assessment and then for the provider to action weeks down the road.
    Yes, there is a way to go before My Aged Care has captured the model we have been working with for many years and it has been a good model that needed to be improved upon not discarded.

  4. It would be very interesting to see what the satisfaction rate was if the study had included the Victorian RAS which came online after the survey was completed.
    As a Victorian RAS, we have had nothing but issues; inappropriate referrals, requests from MAC for in home assessments where the client has already been assessed by an ACAT, limited information coming through on the client referral, call centre staff that obviously have limited knowledge of aged care services & appropriate referrals for client need, call centre staff constantly blaming other call centre staff when advised of an issue…the list goes on. I cant honestly say that MAC has done anything positive for service providers – it has just added a layer of incompetence that a RAS now has to work though in order to ensure that elderly people receive the services that they need.

  5. Now what about looking at care staff ratios it is becoming impossible. 2:15 staff ….Residents staying at home longer and coming in high care. Overloaded ..more and more put on us. Hospital ratios child care ratios not in line with age care and wages well below ….HELP

  6. The purpose of My Aged Care is not to make it easier for providers, it is to make it easier for clients to get access to the support they need. Seems to me that while there are areas for improvement clients appear pretty happy for a brand new system.

    Change is hard, and lets be honest there has been enormous change in the sector over the past couple of years. I think the provider satisfaction levels are more about not understanding the impact of the introduction of My Aged Care and not being well enough prepared than it being a bad system.

    Probably time to stop complaining and start working together maybe?

  7. As a recipient of care, I do have a problem with being referred to a service that charges $100 per hour for a handyman to change lightglobes.

    I am also concerned that I have not received the services that I had been referred to by the provider, although they said that the service was available.

    Another point is that I have had to complain about the inability of the provider to provide someone who is actually able/capable of doing the required vacuuming, mopping and bed making.

    They’ve employed so many young/teenage people who have no idea of doing anything.

    I’m just about ready to give up. I have to clean, after the person is here, so what’s the point in having anyone here and paying for the lack of service?

  8. Anonymous. If what you are saying is true and the system is not making it easier for providers to refer clients to the right service then as you say MAC is not meeting it’s target. If nobody complains then the service will remain incapable of meeting it’s purpose. However MAC was sold by the government as improving service delivery and being more efficient as a referral tool for providers.
    Those MAC clients who are cognitively impaired who can not talk for themselves who were always going to struggle with MAC. It was a predictable outcome when MAC was being conceptualised.
    My experience of the complex cognitive patient is difficult issues that can not be resolved as MAC takes the talking out of referral pathways. My experience in NSW is the same as LS experience in Victoria and until the referral process is upgraded it will continue to be that way.

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