On 1 November, Australia’s new Aged Care Act will mark its first anniversary. It’s an occasion to acknowledge progress, but we shouldn’t celebrate success just yet
By Voni Leighton, Co-founder and Managing Director (Clinical), Vitalis Health
The intention behind the Aged Care reforms that came in last year is absolutely right. Older Australians deserve dignity, choice, transparency and access to safe, high-quality care. I don’t think anyone in our sector would disagree with those principles.
However, good policy intentions don’t automatically translate into better experiences for older people.
We have spent an enormous amount of time focusing on regulation, compliance, systems and administrative processes, but the real measure of success should be what has actually changed for the person receiving care.
Are older Australians getting services when they need them? Are families finding the system easier to navigate? Are we preventing avoidable hospital admissions? And are we supporting people to remain safely and independently in their own homes for longer?
Those are the outcomes that matter.
Compliance and care delivery
From a provider perspective, there is also a very real tension between increasing compliance expectations and the financial and workforce pressures associated with delivering care.
We absolutely support accountability and strong clinical governance. But we need to ensure that the administrative burden doesn’t consume resources that should be directed towards frontline care.
There also needs to be much greater recognition that aged care is, increasingly, health care. At Vitalis, we are supporting older Australians with multiple chronic conditions, complex medications, wounds, frailty and significant clinical risks.
The system needs to evolve beyond simply providing domestic assistance and personal care to delivering genuinely integrated, clinically supported care at home.
So, for me, the first anniversary is an important milestone, but the real work is still ahead of us.
Delivering integrated healthcare at home
At Vitalis, our strategy is to continue doing what we’ve always believed in, which is delivering high-quality, clinically governed healthcare in people’s homes.
We’re not trying to become the biggest provider of traditional aged care services. Our focus is on providing an integrated model of care that brings together nursing, personal support, allied health, complex clinical care and hospital-level services when they’re needed.
We have more than 30 years of clinical experience informing our leadership, and we’ve invested significantly in our clinical governance frameworks, workforce education, accreditation and the systems required to deliver safe, complex care in the community.
We see enormous opportunities in supporting older Australians whose care needs are becoming increasingly complex.
For example, someone living at home may require assistance with showering and meals, but they may also need intravenous antibiotics, complex wound management, chronic disease management or palliative care.
Traditionally, those needs can be managed across multiple providers and disconnected parts of the health system.
Our approach is to bring those services together, with appropriate clinical oversight, so that people experience greater continuity and don’t have to navigate multiple fragmented services.
We’re also focused on building stronger relationships with hospitals, specialists, health insurers and other community providers.
The reality is that Australia cannot continue to rely so heavily on hospitals to manage conditions that can safely and effectively be treated at home.
From a business perspective, we are being disciplined about where we invest, ensuring that our services are financially sustainable while maintaining the clinical standards that are fundamental to our organisation.
I think providers who will succeed in this environment are those who can demonstrate genuine quality, strong governance, workforce capability and measurable outcomes, rather than simply delivering more hours of care.
For Vitalis, growth is important, but it will never come at the expense of clinical safety or the quality of the care we provide.
Beyond funding silos
The government needs to keep listening to the people delivering care, as well as those receiving it.
The principles of the reform are important, particularly the emphasis on rights, dignity and quality. But we need to make sure that the way we implement those principles is practical, sustainable and genuinely improves outcomes.
I’d also encourage the Government to look much more closely at the intersection between aged care and the broader healthcare system.
We still tend to treat aged care, community healthcare and hospital care as separate systems, with different funding mechanisms, eligibility requirements and service arrangements.
But older Australians don’t experience their health needs in those separate categories.
Someone living with frailty, heart failure or complex wounds doesn’t distinguish between an aged care need and a healthcare need. They simply want to receive the right care, at the right time, preferably in their own home.
We have the clinical expertise, technology and models of care to deliver much more of that care outside hospital. What we need are funding arrangements and commissioning models that support genuinely integrated care.
We cannot continue increasing expectations around governance, reporting, workforce capability and clinical oversight without ensuring that funding reflects the real cost of delivering those services.
Strong regulation is essential, but regulation alone doesn’t create a sustainable care system.
And crucially, there needs to be a focus on outcomes.
Let’s measure how many avoidable hospital admissions we’re preventing, how quickly people can access care, whether their functional independence is improving and whether families feel genuinely supported.
If we can get those things right, we won’t just have a better aged care system. We’ll have a better healthcare system.