1 November will mark 1,706 days since the Aged Care Royal Commissioners handed their Final Report to the Governor-General – and for the first time, the sector can say it has certainty.
From Saturday, the new Aged Care Act and Support at Home program will finally take effect. After five years of policy churn, the rules of the game are clear.
For residential aged care providers, certainty is already paying off: valuations are climbing, workforce applications are up, and balance sheets are healthier than they have been in years.
As Aged Care Minister Sam Rae noted this week, Government expenditure in home care has more than doubled in the past five years.
“We want to support people to stay in their homes for longer… but it also has to be sustainable and equitable,” he told ABC.
That’s the crux of it. Certainty is the beginning – not the end – of transformation.
A true turnaround
Just five years ago, operators were grappling with empty beds costing $100,000 a year and workforce pipelines that had all but dried up.
Today, we have bipartisan backing for the Aged Care Taskforce recommendations, 2% RAD retention, and genuine digital upgrades on the Government’s end.
You only need to look at the updates completed by software developers such as Leecare to see the level of change involved – see below.
Leecare’s Aged Care Act system updates to its Platinum6 solution:
Assessment/Plans:
- Catheter & Line Details
- Clinical Pathway (Older people in aged care homes): Suspected UTI
- Seizure Management Plan
- Resident Medication Management Review (RMMR)
Details
- Leecare schema changes
- Resident/Client Administration Details (added HELF, consents, etc.)
- HELF form
Daily Forms
- Deep Brain Stimulator
- Sedation Score (for eNRMC clients)
- Syringe Infusion Observations
- “Stop And Watch” daily form (new alert enabled)
Assessments/Evaluations
- Delirium Screen
- Meal Tray Card Content
- MedMaIDE (Medication Management Instrument for deficiencies in the elderly)
- Resident of the Day Checklist
- Trauma Awareness Assessment
- UCLA Loneliness Scale
Allied Health
- “Referral to Allied Health Services” form (enables alert & NMQIP Allied Health Recommended Services Received report)
Admission Assessments
- Admission – Respite
- Admission Summary – Permanent (24–72 hrs)
- Admission Tasks Day 1–14 Checklist
Doctor
- Nurse-Initiated Medication form
Palliative Care
- Supportive and Palliative Care Indicators Tool (SPICT)
- Assessment of Life Extinct
Care Evaluation
- Care Evaluation – Care Outcomes/Changes (updated with quick-open buttons to relevant assessments)
But there’s still plenty of unfinished business: the upcoming accommodation review, unresolved home care price caps, the HELF debate, and a national waitlist crisis that continues to deny older Australians timely access to support.
Rural and regional providers remain disadvantaged by transport, workforce and viability gaps. And the burden of red tape still pulls experienced staff away from care.
Plan T now required
That’s where Plan T – Transformation comes in.
If operators are to survive – and thrive – we must free the sector to be profitable.
Profitability isn’t a dirty word; it’s the way to fund better care, innovation and workforce investment.
Transformation doesn’t mean asking for more money. It means cutting duplication, streamlining compliance, and rewarding efficiency and ingenuity instead of punishing it.
Because buying doesn’t build supply. More mergers and acquisitions may change who owns the beds – but only transformation will deliver more of them.
These solutions must come from the people who walk the floor every day and know where the real tangles lie – not from bureaucrats sitting behind desks in Canberra.
The bottom line? The sector deserves congratulations for how far it’s come. But survival alone is not success. True reform means moving from rescue to renewal – and finally building a system built to last.
