From policy to practice: How to navigate aged care reform with strong governance

Australia’s new Aged Care Act 2024 (‘the Act’) comes into effect on 1 July 2025. Drafted in response to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, it builds on already delivered reforms and legislates, among other measures:

• The Government’s response to the Aged Care Taskforce recommendations
• The new Support at Home program
• Strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards
• Stronger powers for the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission
• A Statement of Rights for older people.

In practical terms, the Act places more responsibility on boards to ensure compliance with the new rights-based care model, emphasising consumer rights, transparency and accountability.

This article provides practical advice on how to meet these new responsibilities. It advocates for proactive oversight and ensuring your governance structures support the new Act’s goals.

Practical board actions and care quality

Supporting clients’ health and well-being remains your paramount responsibility. Providing high-quality services is your core business.

Boards should prioritise continuous education so members can stay informed about regulatory changes and their impacts. Additionally, careful monitoring of funding allocation is essential. Further actions include:

• Reviewing governance and risk management protocols
• Appointing or enhancing compliance officers
• Establishing clear policies for handling customer complaints
• Ensuring regular care quality audits.

With this emphasis on quality, providers will benefit significantly from becoming ISO9001 accredited. As the international standard for quality management systems (QMSes), ISO9001 helps organisations establish structured processes to enhance service delivery. Becoming accredited is a multi-step process, but it brings many advantages.

These advantages include enabling your organisation to respond quickly to evolving customer needs, becoming more competitive in the marketplace, improving operational performance, and optimising time and resource use.

To learn more about ISO9001 accreditation for Australian businesses, visit our website.

Stakeholder engagement and transparency

Stakeholder engagement is essential to good governance for any business, especially in health and aged care industries. The new Act makes it even more so.

‘Stakeholders’ in this case include shareholders, investors, care customers and residents, families and the broader community. Many people, especially those approaching retirement age or making preliminary plans for their retirement, take an interest in the industry.

Wise boards will adopt practices including:

• Holding regular meetings with residents’ families
• Setting up feedback loops and customer-response mechanisms
• Seeking input from advocacy groups
• Remaining in touch with regulatory bodies.

Such practices will help ensure your governance decisions are practical, well-considered, well-understood, well-received, and compliant with all your regulatory responsibilities.

Leveraging technology for governance efficiency

We recommend adopting a digital governance platform to manage your responsibilities and ensure you can access data-driven decision support and real-time reporting.

Look for a solution that can improve board communication and information sharing, streamline document management and efficiently track compliance – all with strong privacy and security protections.

In light of recent reforms in healthcare, we also recommend building your awareness of AI risks. We discuss these risks in detail in our blog, ‘6 Major AI Risks in Healthcare’. In short, these risks include:

1. Data privacy and security risks
2. Bias and discriminations
3. Lack of transparency
4. Regulatory and compliance challenges
5. Operational risks
6. Cost overruns and ROI issues.

A board software platform can help you meet these challenges, stay on top of compliance deadlines, facilitate care audits, and streamline other critical functions. OnBoard is built to help you do all that – and more. It helps reduce operational risk and improve governance by simplifying everything, from meeting prep and secure voting to signing documents and collecting real-time feedback.

Be prepared

In summary, the new Aged Care Act 2024 takes effect on 1 July 2025. While care providers’ high-level responsibilities remain the same – ensuring high-quality, high-value care – significant changes will require boards to take action, including:

• Reviewing governance procedures
• Ensuring and demonstrating care quality
• Engaging stakeholders
• Improving transparency.

To achieve these goals, we encourage all boards to take a proactive approach to governance, ensure continuous education and regular stakeholder communication, and adopt an effective technology solution.

The OnBoard Team
OnBoardMeetings.com