To address the government mandatory care minute standards in response to the 2021 final report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety
SYDNEY, NSW., September 16, 2022 – inTechnology Distribution, one of Asia Pacific’s leading value-added distributors, announced today the launch of an Automated Care Minute Reporting System to help residential aged care providers across the country comply with the new Australian National Aged Care Classification (AN-ACC) care funding model that will replace the Aged Care Funding Instrument (ACFI) from 1 October 2022.
Consistent with the Royal Commission recommendations, from 1 October 2023, the initial care minute requirements will be set at a sector-wide average of 200 minutes per day, including a minimum of 40 minutes of registered nurse time. This will be based on care provided by registered nurses, enrolled nurses and personal care workers. Funding will be provided from 1 October 2022 (the commencement of AN-ACC) in recognition that it may take some time for providers to attract and retain staff. The Government’s policy is that, from October 2024, the care minute requirements will increase to a sector-wide average of 215 minutes per day, including a minimum of 44 minutes of registered nurse time.
The Government’s policy is that, from October 2024, the care minute requirements will increase to a sector-wide average of 215 minutes per day, including a minimum of 44 minutes of registered nurse time.
“The challenge for the aged care providers is how to capture and report the time spent with each resident without this becoming an administrative burden on their staff, taking them away from focusing on providing the best possible care for their residents”, said Mark Winter, Chief Executive Officer at inTechnology Distribution.
“In order to eliminate this burden, we have launched an Automated Care Minute Reporting System based on Real Time Location System (RTLS) technology. This system automatically captures every interaction between caregiver, registered nurses and resident with detailed real-time reporting and alerts to ensure each resident receives the right amount of care minutes based on their case-mix classification.”
Resident/caregiver and RN interaction - When a particular class is clicked on from the above dashboard, the below dashboard will be displayed. This dashboard will show all residents and the amount of time a resident has spent with caregiver and RN.
“These aggregated minutes can then be viewed within the system per shift, day, week, month etc or integrated into an existing Care Delivery Management System, Business Intelligence (BI) or AN-ACC reporting platform”, Mark said.
“Having this visibility will enable residential aged care providers to increase staffing levels to meet the new care minute requirement (targets) where they will receive equitable care funding that better matches resident funding with the costs of delivering care, enabling a more efficient, transparent and sustainable system”, Mark concluded.
Main dashboard - Above is an example of a site’s main dashboard. The 13 classes will have their own time requirements. The progress bar e.g., class 1 will indicate how many residents have had their minimum care time fulfilled. This will be generated on a resident-by-resident basis, not a percentage of time spent. The bed count as well as alerting will be visible to give an overall picture of what is happening onsite.
inTechnology has been providing Real Time Location System (RTLS) technology to the aged care industry through their partner network for the last 12 years for resident tracking, elopement prevention, staff tracking and contact tracing and believe the launch of this Automated Care Minute Reporting System will see a significant increase in the aged care providers adopting RTLS technology.
Resident Dashboard - When a resident is selected from the dashboard above, the below dashboard will be displayed. The above breaks down each interaction between the caregiver and RN and displays each interaction and time spent on the bar graphs. A complete list of interactions will be available in table form.
