Home care compliance – why it matters and how we do it
What aged care and NDIS compliance means to us
At Five Good Friends, compliance is very important to us. Our goal is for all our Members and your loved ones to have great outcomes. We believe that by exceeding the home care and NDIS compliance requirements, we can exceed our customers expectations and help provide the best quality of life possible.
Here we explain what home care compliance is and how we make sure we’re always compliant.
What is home care compliance?
Every Home Care Package provider or aged care home needs to meet the government regulations and standards. Providers must comply with eight Aged Care Quality Standards.
These standards are:
- Consumer dignity and choice
- Ongoing assessment and planning
- Personal care and clinical care
- Services and supports for daily living
- Organisation’s service environment
- Feedback and complaints
- Human resources
- Organisational governance
Government providers may face an assessment where our performance is rated against each of the Quality Standards. We will receive a Compliant or Non-Compliant rating and a copy of the report is published on the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission’s website.
Compliance can also be checked by reviews and consumer feedback. If a provider isn’t compliant, they receive a plan and timeframe to fix the issue.
What is NDIS compliance?
To be a NDIS registered provider, we apply to the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission (NDIS Commission). They do an audit against the NDIS Practice Standards, and we need to meet and adhere to the NDIS Code of Conduct and support our workers to meet its requirements.
Once the NDIS has made their assessment, we are officially accredited and need to continue to meet their registration requirements. They regularly review claims to make sure we’re compliant and we could be contacted as part of their compliance monitoring procedures.
How we work on NDIS and home care compliance
At Five Good Friends, we have an excellent compliance track record. We believe that by continually checking ourselves against the quality standards, we can provide the best transparent and quality services for our Members.
Government assessments should happen around every three years, however, they could ask to assess us at any time. To make sure we’re prepared, we do regular internal audits. This means we check everything is in order and identify any gaps. It’s also a way we can celebrate any successes within our business and provide feedback to our Helpers and staff.
How we use technology to help us with NDIS and home care compliance
Compliance can be complicated, so we know we need the right tools to help us manage it. Our care management platform Lookout, helps us provide quality care and identify and reduce risks to clients.
Lookout is our central repository for all our workflows. Our Helper Perspective of the app is fully integrated with our app for Members and their families. This means you can login and see for up-to-date information about the care that is being provided and any updates from care providers, allied health providers and the Five Good Friends admin team.
It also provides a place where government assessors can login and check for themselves that we are complying with quality standards.
Here is how it helps:
Tickets
Our Members, Helpers and our Five Good Friends team can raise tickets for many reasons. They could be for signing up new Members, annual reviews, hospitalisations, internal audits, staff background checks, Covid-19 notifications and more.
Tickets mean we have one monitoring and screening tool that makes sure a workflow is being followed. Everything is in one place and can be monitored on a central dashboard.
For example, in July this year the NDIS added a condition of registration for providers of personal supports. They noted that there could be a level of risk for a person who lives alone and receives personal support from the same individual NDIS worker for an extended period.
We used Lookout to work out which of our Members live alone and have only one Helper. Then we created a monitoring strategy using tickets to make sure those risks were reduced, and we complied with the new requirements.
Shared notebook
Poor communication is often a cause for non-compliance. We have a shared notebook which helps with communication and continuity of care. It’s the electronic version of the paper notebook that many providers used to use.
With our shared notebook, our Helpers leave a check out note for every Member they visit. They can write any details about the Member and as soon as they submit the report, our remote care monitoring algorithm will analyse it. The algorithm can identify any actual or potential risk based on the words in the report, then flag that note on a dashboard for our Care Team to review.
The shared notebook also means Five Good Friends can leave important notes for the Helper such as things they must do at their visit like make sure they give certain medication. The Helper will have to tick a box saying they’ve done it before they can leave the Member’s house.
Family members can also log into their app and leave notes for the Helpers. This means everyone involved in a Member’s care knows exactly what is going on at all times.
Dynamic care plans
When a new Member joins us, we create a care plan which includes what our services are and how we’re going to support them. This care plan is included in our Lookout app so every Member, Helper and family member can always access the details.
Our care plans are dynamic, which means any change that is made, is updated in the app. It also keeps a record of the history of the care plan so we can see who changed it, when it was changed and what was previously written.
A dynamic care plan not only helps our compliance, but it also helps our Members feel more supported. They don’t have to keep telling their story when new Helpers visit, ensuring continuity of care.
Learn more about home care and NDIS compliance
If you’d like to learn more about home care compliance, you can read the audits of any home care or aged care provider at the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission. Here are the latest Five Good Friends audits.
To find out more about the NDIS registered providers list, visit the NDIS commission website.
Read more about how we use technology to improve home care.
If you’d like to talk to us about compliance or any other part of our care management, please get in touch with us on 1300 787 581. We are always happy to talk to you.
