If you are already in receipt of a Government Subsidised Home Care Package then you would have recently received a letter from the Federal Government via My Aged Care that looks like this:

Changes to Home Care packages letter

Essentially this letter is saying:

  • From the 27th February 2017 your Home Care Package is assigned to YOU, rather than to your Current Approved Provider and this means YOU can NOW CHOOSE who you want your Approved Provider to be.

Congratulations! The Government has just handed you enormous power! The power to move to:

more hours of Government paid care;

better quality of Caregivers.

What is an Approved Provider?

An Approved Provider means an accredited aged care organisation who has applied and been accepted by the Federal Government as being capable of receiving and managing your Home Care Package Government Funding and capable of Case Managing Care and providing and managing in home care for Older Australians.

Daughterly Care Community Services became an Approved Provider on Friday, 10 March 2017

Our first job is to transfer across all our existing clients who want us as their Approved Provider.

I like to take a conservative and careful approach and only make that decision after I have audited a few months of financial statements so that I can see what you are being charged and check for overcharging errors which you can ask to be refunded back into your Home Care Package.

To date, I have recommended two clients stay with their Current Approved Providers because there is no financial advantage in transferring. (Yes, it would be more convenient to just deal with one organisation).

Every other clients’ statements I have audited, I am finding:

  • significant overcharging errors;
  • very high fees; and
  • undisclosed unethical fees and therefore they are significantly financially advantaged by transferring to Daughterly Care Community Services.

This is a very typical example of a Home Care Package scenario that I am auditing:

Client has level 4 funding = $48,906.35 pa

The Current Approved Providing is charging 34% pa administration and case management fees, which is a massive $ 16,628.16 a year lost in fees to the Current Approved Provider.

Daughterly Care Community Services’ total Home Care Package management fee is 10% pa which is $4,890.64 a year.

So by transferring, our client will reduce their Approved Provider Fees by $11,737.52 a year and therefore receive $11,737.52 MORE in care without paying one cent extra. 

If they don’t need that extra care then they can “bank“ or “build up” their Government Funding and use it to pay for more care when their care needs increase.  The reality is most of our clients who have level 4 Home Care Packages need as much care as they can receive, unless their loving family is providing much of the care.

Most of the clients of this Particular Approved Provider will transfer to Daughterly Care Community Services not because they will save SIGNIFICANT MONEY (yes, that’s a huge bonus) but most will transfer to escape very poor service (inflexible attitude, don’t return calls, don’t let them spend their accumulated balance).

For example, this client was denied an extra one off service and made to pay for it privately because the Current Approved Provider would not authorise it despite the client having over $6,600 Government and personal excess funds accumulated at the time of that request.

That is a very strange attitude. It is certainly not service orientated.

In reality, Daughterly Care has been “consumer directed” for over 21 years. We are used to dealing with financially empowered clients who tell us what they want and we just deliver. This is the complete opposite to many Approved Providers who act like entitled Government Departments because frankly, they have had 21 years of being the powerful-organisation who hands out Government Funding to a waiting list of ‘care recipients’

That Particular Approved Provider doesn’t know how to act in a Consumer Directed way YET– only in a Provider Directed way because that’s their history.  They will learn in time. In the meantime, clients are choosing to transfer away from being “directed” to being valued clients who are listened to.

The fact that Daughterly Care charges $11,737.52 less a year – well that’s just a significant financial bonus.

DO NOT TELL YOUR CURRENT APPROVED PROVIDER THAT YOU ARE TRANSFERRING WITHOUT LETTING ME AUDIT YOUR STATEMENTS PLEASE.

We are finding significant errors that you need to ask to be refunded.

Kate