This case study shares how BlueCare redesigned and transformed to deliver care in the home like never before while adapting to changes in the aged care environment.

BlueCare’s aspiration is to focus on complex care in the home to help older people stay home for longer and remain healthy, active, and connected. When the Support at Home program was announced we knew we needed to change to get ready.

We designed and implemented BlueCare Neighbourhoods, a model drawing from customer and workforce feedback and international best practice models for place-based care. The model places people at the centre of care where they are connected to a Neighbourhood Team embedded in their local community. This team works with customers to design and deliver tailored care to meet their needs and goals, linking in specialised services as needed. Services are delivered in people’s home or the community setting of their choice, aiming to maintain and grow independence, choice and control. This model allows for increasingly complex care to be delivered in the home.

Moving to BlueCare Neighbourhoods required a complete transformation in the operating model, with changes to staffing models, ways of working and new technology systems and processes. We implemented incrementally across Queensland starting in 2023, finishing in May 2024. The changes impacted 3,200 staff and over 30,000 BlueCare customers across Queensland.

BlueCare Neighbourhoods provided a significant opportunity to improve customer experience, staff experience and retention. Early feedback from people and customers show improvement in overall experience and high levels of satisfaction with lots of opportunity and optimism to improve. The technology foundation has provided a high degree of automation, straight through processing and data quality improvements across operations.

This presentation shares what we learnt implementing BlueCare Neighbourhoods to inform others on their own change journeys. We will cover:
– Designing BlueCare Neighbourhoods – how we used feedback from customers and our workforce to inform design, pilot the model, and adapt it for delivery in diverse metropolitan, regional and remote communities
– Matching technology to our care model – how we identified what technology would support us to deliver excellent care in a more efficient and effective way
– Taking on change – how we managed a total staffing restructure and alongside significant technology change
– Looking to the future – what we are learning as we embed the model, work towards our strategic goals and prepare for reform