The Strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards were originally slated for release on 1 July 2024 with the passing of the new Aged Care Act. The delayed release to July 2025 means a greater expectation of compliance from the go-live date. Auditors will want to see strong evidence of full implementation of the new Standards.

This guide offers practical steps and Ausmed’s key updates to ensure your organisation remains on track and ready for the changes.

In a recent webinar, Zoe went through the following core activities to assist providers:

Core Objectives to Stay on Track

1. Understand the Key Changes and Educational Implications

The Aged Care Bill 2024 is the culmination of an unprecedented amount of reform over the past 2-2.5 years. There has been an intense and sustained focus on embedding high-quality care into aged care. The result of this is that the new standards contain 142 specific references to clinical and care-based skills/areas of risk. This represents significant educational implications associated with implementing and meeting conformance with the new standards.

2. Mitigate Compliance Risk by Reviewing the New Audit Model

The new audit model focuses on outcomes and includes changes in the audit structure, terminology, and grading. Familiarising your team with this model will help mitigate compliance risks and ensure your organisation is audit-ready.

In conjunction with understanding the specifics of the new audit methodology, it may also be valuable for you to reflect on your organisation's overall audit capacity and reporting capabilities. This could be as simple as taking a moment to assess preparedness, including giving your organisation a readiness score out of 10, which can help identify gaps and areas for improvement in meeting the new Standards. Other questions to consider include:

1. Are you presenting data in the appropriate format for the right audience?
2. How much time does it take your managers to generate reports?
3. Is your governing body (Board) satisfied with the level of reporting?
4. Could any team pass a “mock” audit?
5. How are you managing key person risk?

3. Meet the New Training Requirements

There are 61 instances where auditors are instructed to request evidence from providers that relate to training and education. The new Standards include updated training requirements, particularly for high-risk areas such as clinical care and safety. Ensuring your workforce is properly trained will be essential to meeting these requirements. The webinar explained how education and quality initiatives reduce harm and improve care.

We recommended a two-pronged approach to meet the educational implications and new training needs associated with the strengthened Standards.

• Phase 1: General training on the new Standards.
• Phase 2 - Training in the new Standards to focus on high-risk gaps and topics most relevant to the needs of your organisation.

The key point is that assigning one or two generic modules to staff “on” the standards is just simply not enough to meet the heightened specificity for clinical care education.

4. Understand the Workforce Requirements in Outcome 2.9

Key actions within Outcome 2.9: Human resource management is highly relevant to workforce development. Outcome 2.9 emphasises the need for skilled and competent staff who receive ongoing training, competency-based education, and regular performance reviews. The strengthened standards are very clear in stipulating why staff need to be skilled and competent, with relevant qualifications and expertise, to provide quality care and services.

This webinar is part of a free series on the Strengthened Standards. Click here to view others in the series.

Practical Checklist for Providers

In the same webinar, Michelle, Chief Customer Officer at Ausmed, shared five very practical activities that she recommends should be completed by which teams and when. They are:

1. Workforce Foundational Understanding of Standards

Michelle recommends that L&D teams ensure that all staff have a foundational understanding of the standards by January 2025. At a minimum, staff should be able to name the standards.

2. Leadership Training Program (with Assessment)

Further to that, Michelle suggests that organisations establish a comprehensive training and assessment plan for facility managers and leaders. This should include at least two face-to-face sessions with leaders by March 2025 to ensure they can explain the new standards anytime, anywhere.

3. Alignment of Quality, Risk and Care Processes

Ideally, quality and risk teams will have mapped service delivery, care, reporting, and risk assurance processes and tools by April 2025. This should include identifying any necessary changes to meet the new standards and align with continuous improvement initiatives.

4. Mock Workshop for Scenario-Based Training

Michelle also recommends that organisations conduct a mock workshop for general managers by May 2025. This workshop should facilitate group-based discussions and work through case scenarios, such as complaints, falls, and reporting processes, ensuring leaders and managers are aligned with the new standards, tools, processes, and reporting requirements.

5. Updating Training Plans

For any provider that has a scheduled audit in the first half of 2025, Michelle recommends continuing with existing training plans. For providers who have been audited in the past 18 months, she recommends transitioning to new training plans starting in January 2025, with new plans in place by February.

How Will Ausmed Keep You on Track?

Ausmed is here to support providers in staying ahead of the new standards. Keep up to date by subscribing to the L&D toolbox. In addition:

• Reporting against the new standards in the Ausmed LMS™ will be live in November 2024.
• Updated training plan templates aligned with the new standards will also be available in November 2024.
• Ausmed Passport™ modules will be updated throughout 2025.

Useful Resources

Here is a list of useful resources that can assist you in staying on track and ahead of schedule:

• About the Aged Care Bill 2024 Fact sheet
• The Strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards – Final draft
• Glossary (from the Strengthened Standards)
• Draft audit methodology
• Draft evidence mapping framework
• Draft pre-audit preparation tool
• Draft Category 6 Request for Information template
• Aged Care Quality Standards: Standard 5 – Clinical Care
• Supporting Sector Readiness for the New Strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards (Webinar)
• Educational Implications of the new Standards (Ausmed)

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