Aged care providers have just four weeks until they must lodge their first quarterly report on the food and daily living services, they provide to their residents in order to receive the $10 a day uplift on the Basic Daily Care fee.
The $10 uplift – costed $3.2 billion – was one of the major measures announced by the Morrison Government in response to the Royal Commission’s Final Report in the May Budget.
Operators must submit their first quarterly report for the period from 1 July to 30 September 2021 by 21 October 2021.
The report must cover quantitative information on expenditure and hours, plus a written response to two quality questions:
Expenditure and hours
- Expenditure on food and ingredients used to prepare meals and snacks on-site.
- Expenditure on pre-prepared and bought-in main meals.
- Expenditure on oral nutritional supplements.
- Expenditure on oral health living expenses.
- Hours for cooks and chefs.
- Hours for other food management and/or food service staff.
- Expenditure on allied health support (such as dietitians, speech pathologists and oral health practitioners) for residents to improve their nutritional wellbeing.
Quality and adequacy
How do you ensure you are providing an appropriate standard of daily living services? You may wish to comment on:
- Quality and quantity of food
- Daily protein intake
- Quality of life and nutritional well-being of residents
- Support for residents with eating difficulties and enhancing food and liquid consumption
- Engagement with residents on menu design or food preparation and service, and/or
- Mealtime or nutritional assessments.
Do you have any plans to review or improve your provision of daily living services?
As we reported here, the reports are one of three hoops that providers have to jump through to be eligible for the funding including:
- sign a formal undertaking to deliver good quality and quantity goods and services 9due by 21 July, though it can be submitted later – however the supplement will only be counted from this date)
- meet the living needs of residents, with a focus on food and nutrition, and
- submit quarterly reports.
If a provider fails to provide a report, the supplement will cease until the report is submitted – and back-payments (for the period of non-reporting) will not be provided.
Operators tell us that while the reporting requirements are in the words of one CEO “quite onerous”, they welcome the funding boost.
Will it make a real difference to the bottom line however? StewartBrown data (pictured above) shows the average operator spent $32 per president per day last year.
It is an issue we will be discussing in next week’s issue of SATURDAY, in your inbox at 6am on Saturday, 25 September. Subscribe here to ensure you can access the full issue.
