Providers must get ahead of reforms, say innovation leaders

Providers must be pragmatic and not get left behind when it comes to implementing technology in the lead up to the 1 July changes. That was the key message David Richter – customer strategy manager at Acredia – had for aged care providers watching the Deep Dive into Unlocking Technology for Aged Care Reform webinar on 5 March.

Moderated by Australian Ageing Agenda editor Natasha Egan, the interactive webinar featured Gary McDonald, senior account manager at software solution provider Epicor, Geoff Bentley, head of business developments at IT services provider Novo3 and Alison Snell, chief executive officer of Yallambee Traralgon Village for the Aged.

Topics included automation for efficiency, ensuring compliance under the new regulation, leveraging data for better decision-making, addressing security challenges and vulnerabilities, and the role of AI in aged care. But it was the need to get ahead of the upcoming changes with digital strategising, and the usefulness of creating resources like digital roadmaps that the speakers emphasised.

The 1 July changes aim to implement a human-rights approach that puts the care recipient at the centre, and Ms Snell, Mr McDonald, Mr Bentley and Mr Richter all agreed the best way to create more time for direct care was to automate back end operations – and do it soon.

Ms Snell said it is a major priority for the standalone regional provider to see better application programming interfaces between programs, allowing them to communicate more efficiently and reduce the time workers have to spend on administrative data entry or searching for physical files.

Mr McDonald said this is a concern he has seen with many providers, ranging from 10,000-bed to 60-bed organisations – and, he added, it will depend on how proactive providers are in their embrace of automation as to whether they will be able to keep up with the incoming compliance reporting.

“From the perspective of a software provider like Epicor, it’s all about trying to make sure that you automate as many of those back-office processes, making sure you link into the strategy that Services Australia are trying to do,” he said.

“The example is the release of the APIs that they’re sending to the marketplace and making sure you leverage those to get the advantage of that efficiency.”

For Mr Richter, AI is the exciting new thing that’s on everyone’s mind, but he emphasised that providers should not limit their imagination to AI when it comes to efficient care delivery, encouraging more attention to be paid to the realm of mobile technology.

“When I say mobile technology everyone of course will have a nurse bell call system on a mobile phone. But looking beyond that, we should be at a point in this day and age where we’ve got clinical care on a mobile application in the hands of personal care assistants or registered nurses or enrolled nurses walking into a room, being able to automatically bring up a resident’s profile and looking at their daily charts, their clinical charts, their sighting charts, whether there’s compression stockings that are required at this particular time,” he explained.

“These are the sorts of things that when I walk into someone’s room, if that is all automated for me – from their assessments, from their care plans, from an incident, if there’s a fall involving a head knock, which turns then to an automation into a neuro-ops chart, I’ll get a ping on my mobile, I go into that room every 15 minutes and I check that resident. That’s automation that puts the resident at the centre of the care that I’m delivering, and that is essentially the backbone of these changes.

“The data is there if I’ve done that. It’s filtering directly from the incident reports into a neuro-ops chart into my mobile app. These are the things that don’t just create efficiencies but deliver more effective care at the end of the day. And that’s really where we need to get to; that more effective care centred around the person. But as we’ve all said here, it’s not just about that – it’s how do we remove all of that manual back-office to get there? And if you don’t have that mobile technology yet, start thinking forward.”

Mr McDonald also wanted providers to understand the need to look at the big picture, and not just spend this transition period looking at isolated issues.

“The view is that each organisation focuses in different areas – they don’t look at the overall enterprise solution approach,” he said.

“And we feel that as a business, that you’ve got to look at all the bits and pieces, you’ve got to look at your clinical system, you’ve got to make sure that it’s good, you’ve got to look at your HR systems, and ensure it’s going to deliver what you need. You’ve got to look at your back-office systems, they can’t be in isolation, because they come up with a combined bit of information that is important for the reporting capabilities, which is what is being demanded.

“You’ve got to look at every area across the business to make sure how it can get efficiencies out of all of it.”

The speakers agreed the necessary changes to automate back-end operations will be costly and will require extensive staff training, but highlighted it as the best path forward to reach the new direct care minute requirements.

While acknowledging the ever-evolving nature of technology, Mr Bentley pointed to digital roadmaps as an important part of preparing for the upcoming changes, as they provide the opportunity to estimate budgets, get board approval and start software training.

“That’s what I would highly recommend, is put a roadmap together, and then you can see, then you know how much money you need, or what the priorities are,” he said. “And it works across all our solutions, whether you’ve got software providers, or you’ve got integrators… it will help everyone.”

Ms Snell said they did approach the changes by creating a roadmap, but as it was originally draw up in 2021 it has changed and been refined.

Despite the constantly shifting nature of technology, she said they remained committed to seeking out solutions that provide more time for frontline client care.

“Anything we can do at all to take less time for the nurses and care staff so they can spend more time with the residents and be more present, rather than chasing up things like pharmacy accounts… there’s so many things that they spend time doing which could be automated and much easier,” Ms Snell said.

“We’re here for the residents, so what we need to be able to do is actually have the time to do it rather than writing reports,” she said.

“So get the machines to do that kind of work.”

Information management and data protection

Speakers also highlighted that with the ever-increasing collection of data across the sector, the higher chance of providers becoming a victim to hacking and information breaches.

Mr Bentley noted a 40 per cent increase in instances of hacking in the Australian health and aged care sector in the last two years – due to the sensitivity of the data collected – and urged providers to take their information storage processes seriously.

The best way to protect the data is through effective policy, he said, so it is important providers have an incident response plan in place for when a breach occurs.

“Guarantee is a tough word, but if you put the right processes and you have the right policies in place and you find compliance, it’s the best you’ll get,” said Mr Bentley.

Looking to digital innovators Ms Snell encouraged them to consider the needs of smaller providers.

“Don’t forget about smaller homes when looking at pricing for your products, because you have to test those products somewhere and some of those smaller homes might be just the person you’re looking for to check,” she said.

Watch the full webinar below.

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