Complied Feedback on the Aged Care Gateway Website and Contact Centre Operations

Complied Feedback on the Aged Care Gateway Website and Contact Centre Operations

Business Design / Considerable effort needs to be made to ensure that there is clarity about what enquiries should be handled by which information services, to prevent consumers being ‘bounced’ around the system;
Redirection from old specific information lines to Gateway means frustrating for some sector workers:

“I was after a simple answer regarding an ACFI query so contacted the number listed under ‘ACFI queries’ in the Residential Care Manuel (1800500853) – this went straight through to the My Aged Care web site number. It was not a happy experience!! They insisted on information that I do not have time to give nor which was relevant to my query for example my date of birth??? I kept saying I was a professional (not a consumer) so why did they need my personal information but it was clear they could not proceed until I answered all of their questions. After approx. 15 minutes (and checking with other people) I still did not get my question answered!! I’m hoping the department will issue a new direct number where we can bypass all of this or will we be expected to go through this process every time we have a query?

Providers with access point experience of stumbling blocks in making referrals through a third party to another agency. So much better before when we could make referrals directly through to people we knew and had a working relationship with. I think it is preferable that referrals do not have to go through a third party as far as the Gateway is concerned
That it is unclear if individual potential clients who are unable to receive government support due to means testing results are referred to providers including those who receive no Commonwealth funding
Contact Centre
Contact Centre Cont. / Need for information/scripting explaining what CDC is and when CDC packages will be available
Service Provider concern that the Gateway contact centre and website are acting as a barrier to efficient dissemination of information to clients about services and access

Inaccurate or incomplete information being given on services and application processes
“Stone walling” by contact centre staff when providers wanted to add to, update or fix incorrect information on the website

Contact centre staff not having knowledge of geographical location or services and “no interest in finding out before advising clients”
I rang both the RAC and the Gateway to see if they were giving useful or correct information to people who call needing squalor and hoarding services. Keep in mind that there is no specific funding for squalor and hoarding in the Canterbury LGA. Catholic Community Services squalor & hoarding service only covers Marrickville. In Canterbury we have successfully started an interagency which has been meeting as a working group of the HACC Forum, and which met for the first time as a functional Squalor and Hoarding Referral Pool at Canterbury Community Options which is now the central referral point for squalor & hoarding referrals in Canterbury LGA. As there is currently no specifically funded squalor and hoarding service or referral point in Canterbury LGA at all, referrals need to go to Community Options. Here is the response I received.:
GATEWAY “– squalor and hoarding is not a service type so there is nowhere to send the referral – we can’t help. This cannot be the answer given to callers, and in any case it is factually incorrect. Wanted me to have the website in front of me to have the phone conversation.
THE CORRECT INFORMATION – is that referrals for squalor and hoarding should be directed to Canterbury Community Options (because they are the flexible long term case management), co-located within Canterbury Branch of NSW Homecare. Referrals can be sent over the phone or by fax. Phone 02 9502 8100 Fax 029502 8199
This raises a design problem with the MyAgedCare.gov.au website. This information is going to need to be listed under HOUSEWORK. Sure a person using the website may be able to find the listing for Community Options, but that would mean that they had deciphered ahead of time how the system works, which defeats the purpose of having a gateway.
Website Design / The scrolling stories on the ‘splash’ page may be too complicated
Undeveloped web pages go to an error message – should be replaced by a “page under development” message
That information on the website should have the date it was last updated visible;
Broken links:

arrows under ‘how to get it’
Broken links: under ‘Find local care services’ and ‘find local ACAT’. Lots of broken links.. too many to list here.
From main menu: ‘Find a Service’ is not working.

It would be useful if the user could:

Easily resize the text via buttons on the page (+ or -) without causing the page to distort, or needing to scroll sideways.
Read the website in different languages. See

A ‘hover magnifier tool’ should be available on the website;
It is slow to load on some computers
When asked to provide your location you are asked to input your postcode OR suburb, however, a drop-down menu then appears and you have to pick a suburb. This could affect, later on (when the wrinkles are ironed out!), a false reading of who is displayed regarding those able to service your area
Web page locks us out after just a few minutes…,could not search for information due to this lockout
I think it needs an option for ‘local information’ or ‘sector development’
The opening screen is cluttered and not immediately obvious re how to conduct a search for services.
No structuring to data base.
Won’t accept 1800 or 1300 numbers for transport. Want individual numbers but we won’t give individual’s direct numbers.
If a State-wide service, have to put in every postcode.
Mobile Phone Use / May want to check the sizes of the sharing icons as they appear different sizes when viewed on some phones.
Website Content
Website Content Cont.
Website Content Cont. / Providers and information services should be able to ensure that the information held at the Gateway is accurate and up-to-date and process to allow this needs to be put into place

Providers unable to upload community packages information or access regional categorisation information for packages

That the previous Care link services had contained information about non-Commonwealth funded private providers and that the move to the gateway has generated a gap in this information with local markets
Missing Information:

About Packages
About CDC packages
That the My Aged Care website contains no information about providers of aged care who are not commonwealth funded, the website only contains information of “Approved Providers”.
Details of Packages and availability including geographic availability
Some providers unable to locate their own organisation
i.e. The telephone no. for Marian Nursing home should be 02 98494700 instead of 96303055
St Mary’s details are completely incorrect. They are using information from 3-4 years ago, which has now changed (and the dept and accreditation agency of course do have current details).
“The information, which they say has been provided by the facility, is 7 years out of date. I have sent them an email letting them know it is incorrect and they are going to contact me, but I would love to know where they got their info from. We’ve gone from 50 to 81 beds – couldn’t have done that without bed licences granted by the Dept, but My Aged Care seems not to know. We’ve also gone through Accreditation and Certification and all info about no. of beds. no. of bathrooms etc. and filled out a thousand forms for Dept over last few years, as we all do, but they still use way out of date info!! Will let you know how I go when they return my phone call.They have returned my call but the person I spoke to could not do anything about it, just refer me on, and I haven’t heard back from whomever she was referring me to!!!!”
“Community Transport doesn’t get a mention in any of the searches I conducted?? And when I asked for transport services that service my area I received 3 alternatives, none of whom provide community transport and 2 of them were from the St George area anyway – 1 being Keystone Community Service, who do not provide community transport and the other was St Mark’s Coptic Church at Arncliffe?”
Many of our details are incorrect, insufficient or need updating – most of our programs actually. If you want more detail...though not exhaustive:
Could not find any of our community care services listed
In residential, at least one website link took you to a completely different site, while others were correct
In some places we were noted at HammondCare, others as Hammond Care
It seems they have HACC funded services listed only.
One of our services is Pole Depot Carers Support Service, but this does not come up under Support for Carers AT ALL. Our service title “Pole Depot carers Support Service” comes up on a search for “Counselling”, but in fact we can only provide counselling for Carers (Our HACC Service type is Counselling/Support, Information and Advocacy). We run Centre Based Day Care (HACC) programs – there is no listing for this service type; I found that we are listed under Social Support, but we are not funded for that service type. We have run a Pole Depot Respite project with NRCP funding for over twenty years, but this is not listed (I have of course confirmed ALL of our information to the Health Care Direct people to populate the Gateway site), yet another local service is listed. A search for Pole Depot Respite Project told me that no such service is listed. It would be very difficult for a client to find our aged and carer services on the site, and our Respite program is simply not listed, despite a call to me confirming the details last week.
All of our details are incorrect. They have one of services named after our RACF licence number and not our Company Name Thomas Holt. They have Sans Souci Gardens under Ben Soc .We have owned it for 2 years. The person on the phone at my aged care site is equally frustrated and embarrassed. I have emailed the appropriate address as advised by the person at my aged care. Haven’t heard yet. If not resolved it will disadvantage my org considerably.
Our details are incorrect on the site. There is an incorrect email address – I have advised the site but they are confused about how to fix it
No. 5 of our 9 sites have basic information wrong eg Phone numbers bed numbers. The Service information part seems to be generic for all our sites.
Under Case Management, “Community Services Living Conditions Project Hunter” is not available in Canterbury as it is in the Hunter.. Despite the fact that it says location is Waterloo, I know, I called them and checked.
Under Case Management – Community Options is not even listed.
Under Care Coordination – there are no listings at all
Neither of our two facilities Viewhaven Lodge (Crookwell) or Sunset Lodge (Taralga) are on the My Aged Care Website at all.
I had previously sent in details for the 5 HACC services run by Narrandera Shire Council in 2 LGAs. None of these services are shown on the My Aged Care Website. I am hesitant to complete these all again if it not going to work.
MoWSA is listed as Meal Services, not Delivery of Meals despite MOW being used in the definition of this category. This means that if a person is looking for a delivered meal, we do not come up on any of the searches.

Regarding the paragraph in the “aged care homes – costs explained” page ie: “What types of costs are there?Aged care homes may ask you to pay two main types of costs:daily fees (calculated according to your income)accommodation payments (calculated according to your assets).” The daily care fee is not assessed, only the income tested fee. An Accommodation Charge which is included in the “accommodation payments” is also a daily fee. I wonder to save confusion if it should be split up: 1) Basic Daily Fees (payable by all residents). 2) Income Tested Fees (an additional daily fee to pay if you receive income above a certain amount – not applicable to a Multi Purpose Service). 3) Accommodation Payments (calculated according to your assets). The following text would then not be required on the page: “Daily fees have two parts:abasic daily fee that everyone paysan income-tested fee – an additional daily fee to pay if you receive income above a certain amount.”
Multi Purpose Services. Country Health SA have many Multi Purpose Service sites which are commonwealth funded but receive their funding differently from a Residential Aged Care facility. This type of service is not covered in the website. I did a search for Multi Purpose Service and it was only mentioned in page titled Living Longer Living Better Aged Care Reform Legislation Package
I think in SA we are taking a huge step backwards with the Find a Service feature - very basic compared with Carelink SA which provides far more detail about individual services. I am not sure how the Gateway will be able to make quality referrals on the basis of what is contained in the database behind Find a Service – there is no detail!
Issues with using the MDS standard definitions for the service types in the Find a Service feature. For example our home maintenance service does not provide assistance with lawn mowing and major home maintenance/repairs.