If you find the home care system confusing and difficult to navigate you are not alone.
Help is available, but sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know.
How can you look for help if you don’t understand what to look for?
THE ABSOLUTE BEST TIME TO ACCESS ASSISTANCE IS PRIOR TO GETTING YOUR MY AGED CARE ASSESSMENT.
WHY?
When you phone My Aged Care the phone operator will ask a series of standardised questions, tick or cross boxes and determine from your answers which level of assessment (if any) you are best suited to.
These call centre operators are not clinically trained. They do not infer or imply or alter the questions if they suspect you have not understood the full implication of your answer.
If you answer politely, understate your issues or misunderstand the process, they will move on and mark you are independent and capable in that area of your life.
A large proportion of assessments are sent to the lower level RAS team (Regional Assessment Service) not ACAT. The RAS assessors cannot assess for home care packages, respite or residential care.
If you provide a phone / contact where a call might be missed, you may have your assessment cancelled out of the system completely after a couple of attempts to reach you. You will not be advised of this and may be waiting for nothing.
When the assessment is booked – you need to know what to ask for. It is preferable that prior to your assessment you conduct a thorough review of your life, function, health and goals and what will best support you to continue to live your best life possible.
The assessor (particularly the RAS assessors) will ask a series of standard questions and tick boxes yes or no. An ACAT is a more thorough assessment by clinically trained professionals.
The other issue is that some RAS assessors don’t appear to understand how the approvals work or will say things like ‘we don’t approve things like that’ or ‘services aren’t available anyway so there is no point approving that’. You may end up with a code for CHSP services that enables you to get a piece of equipment to support your independence, but then find out that there is no OT or physiotherapy code to get the assessment required to lodge the equipment request.
HOW DOES IN MY PLACE SA SUPPORT YOU DURING THE ASSESSMENT PROCESS?
At In My Place SA, Jennifer is a highly experienced physiotherapist with many years of assessing persons in their own homes and making recommendations and programs to maximise independence and function. She has also worked in a huge variety of clinical settings including brain injury / stroke rehab, cardiac rehab, orthopaedics, amputee clinics, geriatric medicine and rehab, acute care and ICU, NDIS, workplace injury and ergonomics, aged care outpatient clinics, community physiotherapy and residential care settings.
Jennifer has also worked for a number of years within home care providers selling home care packages, assessing customers needs, working with budgets and negotiating with ACAT / RAS to get improved assessment results.
When you consult with In My Place SA prior to your My Aged Care assessment, we conduct a thorough assessment to determine what you will be wanting to get through the aged care system (and any other pathways to care, equipment, community connection etc)
We will seek out the services that you need or are interested in, determine what approvals are required for access to these and include them in the assessment request.
We write a clinical based assessment requesting certain approval codes, with clinical reasoning as to why each have been requested. We will look at your pension / income status and help to determine which funding system will be most beneficial and discuss this with you.
If there is any requirement for approvals for respite and/or residential care likely in the near future we will override the automatic referral to a RAS team and request an ACAT assessment, again giving sound reasoning to the assessors.
The assessors will get this report with the request for assessment and have access to this information.
You will also receive a copy of all of this information so that when the assessment occurs you can print it out and make sure it is all covered during the assessment.
Once the assessment is completed, you are unlikely to be reviewed in the following 12 months unless you have a massive change in circumstance.
So – getting it right from the get-go is pretty important!
www.inmyplace.com.au