Aged care’s GPMS portal levels up and a business-to-government API is in the wings.
Residential aged care facilities can now ditch the paper in favour of digital reports on more quality indicators mandated by the Royal Commission in to Aged Care Quality and Safety.
The Government Provider Management System (GPMS) will release five new functionalities including approved home care provider annual statement, reporting on 24/7 registered nurse coverage, star rating enhancements and some exemptions.
The change takes effect today (Monday 3 July). The ability to report quality indicators, like number of falls and physical restraints, will also go live via GPMS in July.
It replaces the QI reporting function within the My Aged Care portal and, according to a Department of Health and Aged Care (DoHAC) website, means all quality indicator data for this quarter is to be submitted via GPMS from 21 July and onwards.
Fay Flevaras, head of Digital Transformation and Delivery – Aged Care Reform at DoHAC told The Medical Republic that a trial was also underway with 10 users testing mandatory quarterly reporting, “like a BAS statement for your tax”.
Ms Flevaras said GPMS new releases are co-designed with the aged care sector community, tested by small user groups, then rapidly released to the broader community.
“We went live with star ratings in December 2022 even before portal was finished,” Ms Flevaras said.
“Then in March we opened up the portal for the for the second quarter of star ratings, and the providers logged on to preview their star rating before we published it.”
Ms Flevaras said that digital transformation was not just about technology but people, process and policy as well. She said that engagement with the sector was key for her.
“We’re having regular conversations,” she said.
“They’re part of the design process as we introduce new things. They’re getting visibility of the runway (of upcoming projects) and we’re having early conversations. It will be the foundation to exponentially solve things.”
Ms Flevaras’ team is now working on B2G – a business to government API layer to “lessen the burden on some of the activities of administrative time”.
She said that GPMS with B2G and the My Aged Care customer portal is “aged care 2.0”.
B2G will enable automatic uploading of data from aged care providers to government departments including DoHAC, Department of Veteran Affairs and National Disability Insurance Scheme.
“There’s a big overlap in providers in the care sector between us and NDIS and DVA, so I’m trying to herd the cats there and create one provider for all of government,” Ms Flevaras said.
“We’re trying to make it so that you don’t have to register three times. Wouldn’t be nice if we just accepted registration just once?”
Ms Flevaras said that once we get the data models were in place to enable automation through B2G, “we could look to those who are interested who would be willing to code it all up and then put it up as open-source software”.
Although she was reluctant to name names, she indicated there could be a spectrum of such “interested” parties, including software vendors and residential aged care facilities that have their own IT development capability.
“I’m trying to work within government to make a human centred approach,” she said.
“If someone has given us data, then we can share it. It doesn’t matter which [department] front door it came through. It came through one of us, we just need to be able to put the information in its right repository so it’s available for reuse.”
