The Department of Health held a webinar last week to explain aged care providers’ quarterly financial reporting requirements that will come into effect on 1 July 2022.
The deadline for July-September submissions will be 4 November 2022, according to notes that accompanied the presentation.
Grant Corderoy, senior partner with aged care accountants StewartBrown, provided information about how to complete the QFR (Quarterly Financial Report) correctly.
Corduroy also explained data collection for determining direct care hours worked. He said ideally hours data would be collected from a roster, however, if that isn’t possible, a payroll system will suffice. What has to be recorded is the hours worked, not the hours paid for.
The average rates of pay used should reflect each award/agreement/contract and should exclude superannuation.
Corduroy noted that accurate reporting of registered nursing hours will help the government calculate its stated objective of providing 24-hour RN coverage.
The Department of Health has assessed that 78% of total staff spending goes toward direct care.
The Department is also keen to understand the impact of agency staff on aged care organisations. The Productivity Commission is also looking into this topic.
From 1 October 2022, the $10 basic daily fee supplement will be rolled into baseline AN-ACC funding for residential aged care homes. Food and nutrition reporting will be folded into the QFR from 1 July 2022.
Aged care providers will have to include information about how much they spend on nutrition supplements, fresh food ingredients and associated allied health services, such as dieticians and speech pathologists.
They will also have to reveal how much of their food is cooked fresh and how much is frozen.
In July 2021, the government began Phase 1 of the reform process to address the recommendations of the royal commission in relation to financial and prudential monitoring.
In particular, the royal commission recommended more stringent financial reporting requirements (recommendation 133) and the establishment of prudential reporting (recommendation 131).
Phase 2 begins from 1 July 2022, and includes the requirement for providers to begin QFR. The Department of Health will also begin to publish select information as part of Phase 2.
The purpose of QFR is to enable monitoring and benchmarking of the sector, gathering information for the star rating system, and to enable direct care minutes to be monitored for the new AN-ACC funding model.
QFR will also inform the regulator about providers’ compliance with the new prudential standards.
Residential and home care providers will have to complete a table answering questions about their viability as part of QFR, placing the onus on providers to self-report on their operations.
Aged care providers also have to submit General Performance Financial Reports (GPFR) for the 12 months 1 July 2021 to 30 June 2022 and annually thereafter. GPFRs will have to be published on the provider’s website or in a publicly accessible format if they don’t have a website.
The reporting will contain information about external lines of credit and will automatically calculate liquidity and capital adequacy ratios, helping providers comply with new prudential standards.
Nursing homes have always been required to deliver fully independent financial reports to the government and due in October every year.
These reports clearly say where every dollar is spent and what it is spent on.
The only reason the government hasn’t released these figures is because they clearly show that Homes are generally running at a loss. Even when authors of stories like this know the truth for some reason they continue to fuel the haters by misrepresentation or half truths..why?