Russell Kennedy has recently finalised an Easy English Guide to our Home Care (HCP) Client Agreement. The Guide is an illustrated document aimed to help consumers understand and complete their Client Agreements.
The Guide uses simple pictures and easy to understand text to help home care providers and their staff explain the key aspects of a home care package and the Client Agreement.
What’s the purpose of the Guide?
Aged care providers have an obligation to assist their consumers to understand their rights and obligations under their agreements.
The Guide will help providers meet this obligation by helping consumers understand how home care packages work and what the agreement means for them. For staff, it will also facilitate and streamline the question and answer process by highlighting key issues staff should discuss with their consumers.
The Guide will also help home care providers demonstrate their compliance with the Aged Care Quality Standards more broadly, particularly Standards 1 (consumer dignity and choice) and 8 (organisational governance) by facilitating better understanding by consumers and thus empowering them in their decision-making and choice.
If you purchase our HCP Agreement on a subscription basis prior to 3 July 2020, we will provide the Guide to you as part of the subscription fee. To express interest in purchasing our Client Agreement and the Guide, please contact Anita Courtney and Solomon Miller via email here.
Update on Client Agreements in the aged care sector
Have you updated your resident HCP, CHSP and Client Agreements?
Russell Kennedy continues to update other aged care agreements in response to industry trends and client feedback. This includes our Residential Aged Care Agreements; Home Care (HCP and CHSP) Agreements; STRC Agreements and Brokered Services Agreements.
For example, our team recently updated all our templates to include new “infection control” clauses in relation to COVID-19 and made updates regarding the privacy provisions in our Agreements. If you haven’t reviewed your agreements recently, we recommend you do so.
If you are a subscriber to our HCP Client Agreement we will have sent you the updates already. However, if you don’t currently subscribe but would like the updates or would just like to make sure your Agreements are up to date, please call Anita Courtney (03) 8602 7211 or Solomon Miller (03) 9609 1650 so they can assist you in reviewing your Agreements.
How the current climate is impacting changes to Agreements?
We have also been assisting both home care and residential aged care providers with specific aspects of their client and service provider agreements. Common issues include:
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Fee variation clauses - Helping home care providers with their fee variation clauses to ensure they have the ability to review their service fees moving forward. Although many providers include provision or a CPI based increased, that may no longer be sufficient for providers in the current economic environment. You may like to read our Alert which discusses the home care pricing transition deadline of 1 July 2020 here. |
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Establishing a contractual framework for home care modifications - Assisting home care providers in establishing an appropriate contractual framework when consumers wish to use their package funds to complete building works. |
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Additional Service Clauses - Assisting residential aged care providers with additional services clauses. The recent decision by the court in the Bupa case highlights the importance of ensuring your additional services provisions are properly drafted. |
Please do not hesitate to contact Anita Courtney or Solomon Miller for further information on any of the above.
If you would like to stay up-to-date by receiving our Alerts, Insights and webinar invitations from our expert Aged Care team, you can subscribe to our mailing list here.