The Commonwealth Home Support Programme and Grandfathered Clients

For a couple of years now we’ve been wondering when services would be required to add unregistered, ‘grandfathered’ clients to the My Aged Care portal.

After all, the information in the My Aged Care portal assists the Government in planning for future aged care needs, and there are a significant number of consumers (an estimated 160,000 people) who were ‘grandfathered’ when the Commonwealth Home Support Programme was introduced in 2015.

But firstly, what is a grandfathered client?

Grandfathered clients are those who were already receiving services under programs such as Home and Community Care (HACC) prior to July 2015 when the Commonwealth Home Support Programme (CHSP) was introduced. These clients are not yet registered or assessed through the My Aged Care system, but continue to receive services and supports under CHSP to ensure continuity of care regardless of their eligibility status.

Why is this necessary?

The thought was that these grandfathered clients would gradually enter the My Aged Care system as their needs increased, when they required additional discrete services, or needed to transition to a higher level of support through the Home Care Package program. In a lot of cases though, this has not happened as fast as expected.

What do you have to do?

Service providers have been asked to register grandfathered CHSP clients who do not have a current My Aged Care record. This registration process allows people to be added to the My Aged Care portal without generating a referral for assessment; but you will need to gain their consent to create the record. To make things easier, the Department has drafted an example letter to be sent or discussed with your clients. Click here to see the letter.

The portal is currently open and organisations have until 11:59pm AEST on the 23rd October 2019 to register any ‘grandfathered’ clients.

It’s important that providers don’t leave it until the last minute to commence the process, especially if the service has a large number of ‘grandfathered’ clients, as it is not simply a matter of adding the person to the system. You’ll also need to add all the services they are currently receiving, so take the stress off yourself and if you haven’t commenced the process, make plans to do so sooner rather than later.

What you will need to complete the upload

To add a client to the My Aged Care system, you will need: 

• The Quick Reference Guide (QRG) on registering a grandfathered client.
• Individual client information as identified on the Data Collection Template. You can confirm this information with the person at the same time as you gain their consent.
• You’ll need their care plan outlining services provided by your organisation, and you’ll need your organisation’s NAPS Service ID for each of the services provided.
• If you are a larger organisation with multiple outlets, you’ll also need to know which ‘outlet’ the client receives services from.

A new ‘Tile’ has been added to the My Aged Care Provider portal called CHSP grandfathered clients.

The following is a summary of the steps involved, please follow the Department’s Quick Reference Guide (QRG) as it outlines in more detail each step and provides screen shots of the My Aged Care Provider portal.

1. Log into your My Aged Care Provider portal and from the ‘CHSP grandfathered clients’ tile, download the list of clients already registered on the My Aged Care system (follow the QRG on the Department’s website).
2. Compare with your existing list of CHSP clients, and identify who’s not on the list.
3. Contact each current grandfathered client (those you have provided services to in the past 12 months and expect to continue to provide services) and gain their permission to be added to the My Aged Care portal.
4. Add grandfathered clients who have provided permission to the Data Collection Template.
5. Follow the steps in the QRG to upload the entire Data Collection Template into the My Aged Care Provider portal.
6. To finalise each client record you’ll need to manually update each client record by adding service information and verifying other relevant information.
7. Once all client records have attained the ‘Ready to Submit’ status you’ll tick the ‘client consent’ checkbox and submit the data to the Department. Note: you’ll only be able to submit once.

Things to be aware of

• You should only upload the Data Collection Template once you have completed it, as re-uploading will wipe all previous data uploaded.
• If you only have one or two clients, or you have missed a client when uploading the Data Collection Template, you can manually ‘create’ a client on the system.
• Don’t worry if you make a mistake and add a client twice, you can easily delete the duplicate record – the system will prompt you if this is identified.

What if clients don’t provide consent to add their information to My Aged Care?

You can’t add a client to the My Aged Care portal if they do not provide consent, however consent from the client does not need to be written – you can obtain verbal consent from the person if this is more appropriate. Just remember to document how and when consent was obtained in the person’s progress notes.

Don’t forget, this process is time limited and you will need to act promptly to ensure you are compliant.

If you can think of someone else who might benefit from this article, send them a link. We'd appreciate it! And if you're looking for more helpful resources to keep your service or organisation compliant, why not check out our Total Quality Package resource hub? We have culturally appropriate, tailored resources that are designed to make your job simpler and help you provide quality care to your clients. Click here to find out more.