Ask a clinical manager in an aged care facility what takes up the time and the answer is rarely the care itself. It is the paperwork around it: the assessments that determine each resident's funding, the evidence that supports them, and the government documentation that has to be completed correctly and on time for every resident, every time their needs change.
The work matters. If an assessment is wrong, the facility is either underfunded for a resident who needs more care than the paperwork says, or exposed because the paperwork claims more than the evidence supports. But most of the time goes into handling the information rather than making the assessment.
Where the hours go
- The same data gets captured three times. The assessment is done at the bedside on a paper form. It is transcribed into a spreadsheet or the care system. Then the figures are typed into the government form by hand from the spreadsheet.
- The evidence sits somewhere else. Progress notes, charts and observations that support a funding level are in the care system or a folder. Pulling them together for a validation means going looking for them.
- The rules are applied from memory. The funding framework has rules about which combinations of needs produce which classification. Clinicians carry them in their heads or on a laminated sheet, and it is easy to slip.
- Nobody knows what is due. Reassessments are triggered by a change in a resident's condition or by the calendar. Without a system watching, they get found late.
What reduces it
Some facilities get a long way with discipline and a well-built spreadsheet. A single assessment template that mirrors the government form, so transcription is one to one. A register of residents with assessment dates and a reminder column. A folder structure for evidence that matches the assessment. These are all worth doing, and they will carry a small facility for a while.
They stop working when there are several facilities, when the people doing the assessments change, or when the framework changes and every template has to be updated by hand.
Capturing it once
Facilities that have cut the paperwork the most use a system that captures the assessment once, interactively, applying the rules as the clinician works so the classification is calculated rather than looked up. The evidence is attached at the point of assessment. The government documentation is generated from the data, completed and ready to lodge, rather than typed. And the system knows when each resident's next assessment is due, so nothing is found late.
That is what we built for AJ Case, a consultancy that helps aged care facilities secure the right government funding for their residents. The platform captures the assessments with interactive recording tools, records incidents, and generates the completed government documentation automatically. The hours it gives back each month go to residents instead of forms.
If your facility is capturing the same assessment three times, have a look at what we build for health providers, or tell us which forms and reports eat the hours.
