Adapt or Die: 10 Moves Home Care Providers Must Make Now

There’s a lot of anxiety in the industry right now. You hear the lobbying, the threats of “lowering care standards,” and whispers of monopoly-style “$105 cleaning” fees. The truth? You don’t need to slash care quality - just streamline. Cutting head-office bloat doesn’t mean cutting care.

Tips to help traditional providers thrive under Support at Home:

1.      Change the culture: simplify everything

Home care is full of experts—clinical, finance, legal—who each bring best practices. But when they silo themselves not around the customers, complexity explodes. Instead, think customer-first. The Aged Care Act 2024 emphasizes simplicity: care recipients have the right to be informed in a way they understand. Time to live that.

Payback, less questions from confused customers.

2.      Decentralize: fewer touchpoints, better journeys

Clients don’t need call centres and multiple teams. Complex structures (intake, care teams, clinical, scheduling, finance, allied health…) create process drag. Shift the organization around the client—not your internal compliance needs.

Payback: less staff, more knowledgeable staff

3.      Plain-English care agreements

Average home care contract: 50 pages, most standard boiler plate agreements have more than three pages of definitions! Ours? Seven (four pages of Ts&Cs, three attachments). No jargon. No legalese. Just clear terms. Pro tip: your exec team—not lawyers—should design these first. Lawyers just sign off.

Payback: low intake cost, simplified staff training

4.      Clean, concise financial statements

The recommended government’s ten-page monthly statement is a nightmare.

They’re not making things easier for providers — but that’s the point. Government won’t simplify it for you. It’s the provider’s job to turn complexity into simplicity.

Tips here:

• Embrace real time invoice approvals and statements, don’t wait monthly.  This is where the detail of care rates and personal contributions can be tackled in a simpler manner
• Embrace graphs, the recommended statement has done ok here.
• Only focus on what is important on the first two pages, that is spending monitoring over the quarterly timeframe, personal contributions, services types and organisations. 
• Make other detail accessible, however, obviously for clients not mandatory reading

Payback: lower education resourcing

5.      Hone your targeting

“Person‑centred care,” “supporting independence”—yup, everyone says that. But that’s table stakes, not differentiation. Big providers all sound the same. That leads to churn, complaints, and misfit client profiles.

Small/regional providers often do better—family-run, culturally aligned, niche services. That’s what you should aim for:

• What are you distinctly good at?
• Who is your ideal client?

Shout that loud.

Overused taglines: “Independence” and “Stay at Home”; Personalized, “Tailored Care” “Quality, Compassion, Dignity, Respect”; “Trust and Safety Assurances”; “Care with Heart,” “Your Partner in Care,” and  “Live Life Your Way”.

Payback: meet client expectations, avoid client churn, staff focus on strengths

6.      Ban jargon in client communication

Stop using these terms with clients—they only muddle:

• HCP, CHSP, SAS, S@H, ACAT
• Co‑contribution, means‑tested
• Care partner, consumer‑directed care
• Restorative pathway, AT‑HM, Participant, Consumer
• Registered Supporter, Power of Attorney,
• Statement of Claim; Fee Schedule; Consumer Directed Care; Pathways

Instead, use:

• Client
• Support
• Help at home
• Your support level
• Care plan
• Check‑ins
• Your costs
• Equipment/home modifications

Speak real language.

Payback: No definition training!

7.      One page budgets

Don’t let finance complicate with quarterly detail—clients and care managers need monthly for day to day management and clients need annual personal contributions for care plan decisions, taken back to monthly for cash management:

• Estimate, and round up, don’t get caught up in detail, ie “Cleaning costs ≈ $70/hr, not $67.50”
• Budget by month, total for year.  quarterly overspends can be watched with cumulative balance, like a bank account!

Payback: Client simplicity, self-management and more valuable check in discussions.

8.      Transparency on steroids

Bad client expectations = bad relationships.

Root cause of many long management time with clients is misaligned expectations, part of this is transparency and communication of such. So go above and beyond the standards box ticking and set a standard that requires no interpretation or training.  Additional ideas:

• Real-time statement access, don’t wait until monthly statements, too late, issues take a long time to understand, most of us have forgotten what happen next week, deal with it immediately.
• Client self-approval of invoices
• Publish policies, clearly, save staff time from re-writing or repeatedly explaining

Payback: Care Management time savings explaining things.

9.      Simple client contacts

Make it impossible for clients to get passed around:

• One team (or person) who owns all inquiries
• No “that’s finance’s job” or “call care management” or “rostering”

Implement a “no-wrong-door” policy so every call is answered clearly and fully.

Payback: client satisfaction, resource savings

10. Turn around time promise - 24hr

Eliminate any and all to do lists in the head office, don’t let jobs build up, using continuous improvement, process improvement, root cause analysis to deal with issues immediately.. don’t make client ever wait

Payback: Agile team, skilled up for most issues, resource savings – issues get worse with time.