News

The Victorian Government has established the $200 million Regional Health Infrastructure Fund as part of its commitment to better health for people in rural and regional Victoria.

The fund will provide upgrades for rural and regional hospitals to ensure Victorians, regardless of where they live, have access to quality health care when they need it.

Funding will assist regional and rural health services to improve:

– safety and quality of services
– service capacity
– models of care
– patient and staff amenity and
– service efficiency.

Projects will be determined through application-based funding rounds, with rural and regional hospitals and health services and agencies able to make submissions.

Applications close 29 August 2016.

Read more:

Victorian Government: Regional Health Infrastructure Fund

From 1 July 2016 Ageing and Aged Care content will be moved from the Department of Social Services website to the Department of Health’s platform at agedcare.health.gov.au.

This is due to Machinery of Government changes which moved the responsibility for Ageing and Aged Care from the Department of Social Services to the Department of Health. The switchover will not be instantaneous as it can take some time for pages to appear. You will be able to continue to access content from the DSS site until the migration is complete. There will be re-directs in place if you use an old DSS url.

agedcare.health.gov.au

The Department of Health has released a new edition of its ‘Information for Aged Care Providers’ newsletter.

Read more:

Information for Aged Care Providers – Issue #2016/12 (.pdf)

The Australian Aged Care Quality Agency has released the June 2016 issue of their ‘Quality Standard’ newsletter.

Read more:

Quality Standard – June 2016 (.pdf)

The 1 July Aged Care fees in residential and home car as well as accommodation prices have just been released.

Read more:

Schedule of Fees and Charges for Residential and Home Care: From 1 July 2016 (.pdf)
Schedule of Fees and Charges for Pre 1 July 2014 Residents from 1 July 2016 (.pdf)

Hot off the press…the 2016-2017 ACFI Rate Updates for Aged Care have just been released.

Rates of payment of Australian Government aged care subsidies and supplements have been updated with an effective date of 1 July 2016

Read more:

Schedule of Subsidies and Supplements from 1 July 2016 (.pdf)

The Aged Care Guild has commissioned Deloitte Access Economics to examine both quantitatively and qualitatively the economic contribution of the aged care sector in Australia, as well as to consider broader industry trends, policy issues, existing challenges and future implications.

The purpose of this report is to highlight the significant contribution of the sector and outline future directions for the aged care industry in Australia.

Read more & Download Report:

Deloitte- Australia’s aged care sector – Economic contribution and future directions

The 1 July 2016 ACFI rate updates should be released towards the end of the month (…if the Department release them in time).

In anticipation of this…Please note the following:

Version 5 clients:

Once the rates have been released we will create a new 5.2.x version which will contain the new rates as well as the Part A changes to the CHC scoring matrix for 1 July 2016 – 31 December 2016.
We will push this version update out automatically and notify you of its release. Please arrange now for your IT Administrator to be available to run this update as soon as possible (once it has been released) and all staff have logged out of Manad Plus.

NOTE: This update will be in v5.2 only, so if you are still running v5.1 the rate update patch will also update you to the latest version of 5.2.

Version 4 clients:

Once the rates have been released we will create a new 4.x version which will contain the new rates as well as the Part A changes to the CHC scoring matrix for 1 July 2016 – 31 December 2016.
We will log in and manually run this update for you on your server as we have done in the past (or if we have had other arrangements in the past we will continue with this process).
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If you have any questions, then please contact our office and speak with your usual Manad Plus Client Manager.

On 9 June the Parliament of Victoria Legislative Council Legal and Social Issues Committee tabled its Final Report of its Inquiry into end of life choices following 10 months of extensive research, consultation and deliberations.

The Committee makes 49 recommendations that focus on Victoria’s palliative care sector and advance care planning system as well the introduction of a legislated framework for assisted dying.

Read more:

PARLIAMENT OF VICTORIA – Inquiry into end of life choices – Final Report (.pdf)

The Department of Health has released a new edition of its ‘Information for Aged Care Providers’ newsletter.

Read more:

Information for Aged Care Providers – Issue #2016/11 (.pdf)