Sustaining and expanding high quality aged care services in the current fast-changing landscape, is complex in a time of distinct challenges and opportunities that are shaping the way we care for older Australians.
Aged care providers across the country face many evolving risks, such as regulatory reform, cyber-attacks, workforce shortages, rising costs, and complexity of care services.

Managing risk is crucial for aged care provider success, particularly when it comes to providing care services, not only to protect delivery of care to consumers, but also – and just as important – to enable sustained growth and innovation. Effective risk management protects value and ensures compliance and, when embraced, helps aged care providers make confident decisions on new innovations, products, or services.
Moving from a compliance-led view of risk to a system-led innovation-focused view, can help shift the focus from “putting out fires” to “preventing them from starting in the first place”, enabling aged care providers to focus on what really matters – providing the right levels of high quality care to older Australians, when and where they need it.

The key questions that aged care providers should be asking themselves are:

• Am I aware of the biggest threats to my organisation’s service delivery and performance quality?
• Do I have the right systems and safeguards in place to protect against these risks?
• Am I regularly scanning for emerging risks that could disrupt our organisation into the future?
• What am I learning from risk events to continuously improve the performance and strengthen the safeguards of our organisation?
• Do I have the confidence to take calculated risks to drive growth and quality?

With so many providers, both in residential and in-home care settings, embracing the benefits of risk management in theory, the practice can feel – and be – overwhelming. The quantity of issues to be across, the complexity of tensions that need to be balanced coupled with outdated systems and processes, can put many organisations under resource and cost pressures.

This presentation will explore efficient, low cost and practical approaches and systems to help streamline risk processes and systems that take away the “burden of risk and compliance” allowing providers to unlock the upside of risk as a catalyst for long-term success and for unlocking the provider’s full potential.