Aged care gateway to operate with reduced services during system outage

My Aged Care will be offline for 65 hours from 3pm today for a major system upgrade to support the landmark home care reforms that come into effect on Monday.

My Aged Care will be down this weekend for upgrades

The government’s My Aged Care will be offline for 65 hours over the weekend during a major system upgrade to support the landmark home care reforms that come into effect on Monday.

The My Aged Care contact centre will continue to operate during the outage but with reduced services, and contingency plans are in place if required, the Department of Health has confirmed.

The IT systems update is scheduled to take place between 3pm AEDT Friday 24 February and 8am AEDT Monday 27 February.

It will support the Increasing Choice in Home Care reforms, which sees home care packages allocated direct to care recipients rather than service providers.

Website users will be able to compare providers, print and email selections.

The system changes include:

  • changes to client data to support the reforms
  • establishment of the national queue for home care packages
  • additional fields in the service finder
  • enhanced sort and filter options in all portals

The contact centre will be open during normal operating hours – 8am to 8pm Monday to Friday, and 10am to 2pm on Saturday -but with reduced functionality during the outage, a spokesperson for the department told AAA.

“This time was chosen to commence the system changes as demand for the call centre rapidly drops off from 3pm (AEDT). The contact centre will still be available to answer general enquires and provide information,” they said.

The department said it would have additional staff on hand to cope with an expected high volume of calls to My Aged Care’s provider and assessor helpline on Monday due to the reforms.

If the system upgrade doesn’t go to plan, contingency plans are in place and will be activated if required, the spokesperson said.

“If the system is not running optimally on the first day we ask providers to be patient and to look at the support material available on the website and first check for any notices advising of system issues rather than individually ringing the contact centre to report similar issues.”

The department said it would notify organisation administrators and team leads via email about system issues following the release. Providers can call the hotline on 1800 836 799 if further assistance is required.

See a summary of My Aged Care system changes here.

Want to have your say on this story? Comment below. Send us your news and tip-offs to editorial@australianageingagenda.com.au 

Subscribe to Australian Ageing Agenda magazine

Sign up to AAA newsletters

Tags: 2017-home-care-reforms, home-care, My Aged Care contact centre, my-aged-care, operational,

Leave a Reply