The year 2025 will herald a new beginning in Australian aged care with the introduction of the new Act, colossal reforms that will require strong leadership, and above all, time to implement.
Aged care providers demonstrated true leadership over the years – leading bravely through massive financial challenges, natural disasters like bushfires and floods, and even the ravages of Covid – all the while caring for our most valued loved ones.
Few other sectors have had to deal with such wide-ranging and ongoing adversities, throughout which aged care leaders have displayed incredible resilience, while every day striving to improve the lives of older Australians.
We fully support the introduction of a new rights-based Aged Care Act, but implementing reforms of such magnitude will take time.
We only get one chance to get this right. Failure would be a disaster for Australia’s aged care sector, affecting older Australians now and in the future. We need confidence moving forward and above all, we need time.
We all want these historic reforms to succeed, and that means a staged approach to implementation should be adopted. We also need to ensure that funding supports the scale of change required.
Preparing for reforms that are still in the design phase is incredibly complex. We expect that every aspect of aged care will be impacted, including service delivery, staff responsibilities and finance.
Not all the information needed to finalise strategic plans will be available by the start of next year, or beyond.
Depending on the reform, new requirements for providers should commence six-to-12 months from the time all information is available.
We can’t have a scenario where parts of the new Act are implemented, with mandated requirements that simply can’t be achieved because of a lack of lead time. That would crush confidence in our sector.
Time to transition is especially important for reforms related to system changes, information technologies, pricing frameworks, and changes to support at home.
Entire computer systems will need to be upgraded or even replaced to respond to the reforms, but we can’t do that until all the information is available.
IT contractors are telling us they need the final details of the legislation and rules before they can even begin updating systems. That could take six months or more after they get it.
Substantial, organisation-wide changes to management and processes will also be needed to implement the reforms, and our valued workers will need training in new requirements and changed practices.
We have the leaders to face these challenges. We have the motivation to improve the lives of older Australians. We just need time to get it right.
Tom Symondson is chief executive officer of Aged & Community Care Providers Association
More stakeholder views from this edition
- Kym Torresi: Now to implement a rights approach for all
- Dr Claudia Meyer: We are warriors for change
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