Service Provider Webinar: Future-proof your NDIS Business and PACE Update
We were joined by Sally Coddington, Principal Consultant at DSC, to fortify NDIS service providers and their offerings amidst industry-wide change and help you get acquainted with the new NDIS computer system, called PACE.
Watch the video replay below where we cover:
What's changing in the Disability Services/NDIS and how that directly affects service providers in the space.
What 'big picture' thinking should service providers do to make sure they are set up for success, moving forward?
Operational changes that service providers can implement to adapt to change.
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Getting your head around PACE will set you up for years (and changes) to come
PACE is putting ‘Supported Decision Making’ for participants into action. Some adjustments are required for some providers, but necessary to protect the right to privacy and avoid coercive practices of previous NDIS processes.
Removal of service bookings
Provider endorsements
Restructure of Funding in Home & Living budget
Providers have limited access to plan data
Larger emphasis on budget planning with participants
Instigation of quoting process and discussions with other supports in place i.e. support coordinator/recovery coach/plan manager
PACE requires SC’s/Recovery Coaches to use reporting templates
Plan building not done by LAC’s but completed by NDIA, no negotiations with LACs
Lean on IT providers to adapt to PACE implementation and for processes
Look at billing practices, i.e. real-time claiming and claiming frequency
Understand obligations of ‘Continuity of support’ with participants and the implications to business practices
Understand debt recovery options and debt tracking with clients
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Hi everyone. Welcome to our webinar Future Proof Your NDIS business and understanding pace for NDIS service providers. My name is Yvette. I'm part of the team here at Kinora and I am also joined by Erin who is manning the chat who's currently hidden at the moment. This is Sally also, but I will introduce her in just a second. There's Erin.
If you're already ignore a member, you may recognise our names from the threads in the Kinora community today. We are lucky enough to be joined for the second time this month by Sally Cottington, Principal Consultant at DSC and Multipotentialite, with experience across finance and Human Services in both the for profit and for purpose sectors around the world.
Being the experts in all things NDIS, she and the DSC team spend their time training and providing valuable commentary on and to the disability sector.
The team at Kinora, hugely grateful for Sally's time and experience today, delving into fortifying service providers looking to not only withstand the many and necessary changes to the sector, but to thrive and grow alongside their participant clients. Thanks for being here today Sally, we will get a chance to talk to you very soon. I just need to do some housekeeping, so bear with me people while we get through this. Just before we get started, a brief background on Kenora. If you're not already a member, Kinora is a safe and supportive online community where you're able to get support for your NDS questions from us, coaches, and our community of thousands of other NDIS participants, their families, and support coordinators, as well as service providers who are experts in their field
So that everyone can get the most out of these great sessions, we record all Kinora webinars and share the video replay and any resources that we mentioned during the session within the community. If you're not already a member, don't worry, we'll send you the replay and resources direct to your inbox. But of course, we'd love you as a member if you'd like to join. It's completely free, even for service providers.
If you need closed captioning today, let me just change the slide. You can, uh, turn that on by clicking More Actions at the top of your screen and then select Turn on Live captions. If you look to the top of your screens, there's also a chat button. If you click on that. Now you can introduce yourself, enter your comments, and ask any questions as we go. Erin will be monitoring chat for any questions that come up, and we'll answer them at the end of the session. Any that we don't get to in the time that we have allocated, we'll make sure to put the answers in the Kinora community and follow up with you directly.
Finally, before we jump into it, I would like to make an acknowledgement of country
In the spirit of reconciliation. Canora acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community.
We pay our respect to their elders, past, present and future. We acknowledge the culture, diversity, knowledge and experiences of First Nations people and celebrate their contributions and specifically those living with disability, their families, carers, and individuals dedicating themselves to a career in supporting people with disability.
If you are just joining us, the goal of today's webinar is to find some common ground for Nas service providers who may be slightly reeling at the number of changes or proposed changes to the industry in the coming months and years, and reinforcing ways to stay the course and build their business alongside helping participants reach their own goals.
To the concept for today. The concept of future proofing isn't a new one, and it might just feel like another square on your corporate jargon bingo scorecard that you're not really interested in stamping. But the PACE rollout may just be your ticket to revamping your business systems and making yourself and your business resilient in the face of impending industry change. But PACE is just a computer system, right? I hear you ask? Correct. But the changes it brings recalibrates the NCIS with a more conscious effort to put the participant front and centre in all decision making, at least in theory. And it's a prime opportunity to reevaluate your offerings to make sure they do the same. Because at the end of the day, people with disabilities are valued and important members of our society who will require ongoing support as they work towards their own goals. Regardless of if the NDIS gets it right this time or indeed in the next review, hopefully not another decade down the track.
So our hope that everyone attending today is that you'll be more comfortable with the idea of what's changing and why and where you should invest your time and energy in the in your business to make sure that you thrive alongside your clients during times of change. So let's get started.
Sally, thank you for being here and sharing your expertise today. And you're welcome. I'm looking forward to it. Amazing. Can you please start by giving us a little bit of background on you and why you do the work that you do? Yeah, sure. So you already kind of gave a little bit of an intro to me. I am a principal consultant with DC. I've been with DC now for eight years, but I've been involved in the NJS since the very beginning.
So I'm joining you from Newcastle, NSW, land of the Awabakal and Worimi peoples. And so I've been involved in the NDIS both professionally and personally since the very beginning. I was the CEO of a service provider as we transitioned to the NDIS in the Hunter, which was one of the trial site areas and one of my three daughters, Nikki, was one of the very first NDIS participants. So Nikki was a participant for four years. She died in 2018. I guess you know, um why am I here? Um, I you know, I guess Nikki is my inspiration for being here and and my background is a corporate and you kind of touched on that. I I seriously felt when the NDIS rolled out in Newcastle that I was made for this. I was like I have the corporate background. I have the passion of of a mum, a lioness, so I continue to do that. So you know my interest and our Full disclosure. My interest is always what's best for participants, but I know that good service providers, um, will meet participants, need to exceed participants needs. And so I think that you know one of the best ways that I can lead to great outcomes for people with disability and their families is by supporting providers to be outstanding in the work that they do. So 100% that's why you are so good at what you do because of all of those reasons. And I feel like that is definitely one of the reasons thatwe having this conversation to make sure that everyone's on the same page with why the changes are happening. So acknowledging what is changing and why, I feel like that's our our intro into why we're here today as well. So can you give your take on what is actually changing within the NDS framework and why? Yeah. So I I think I want to zoom out a little bit just before we get into that because we are at an unprecedented time in history, um, in Australia in terms of change for the disability community. And when I say the disability community, I mean obviously disabled people and their families, but also mean that the services that support these people. And I don't want to terrify anybody with that because I because because with change comes opportunity which I think you've alluded to really beautifully. But there are actually um three areas of change um that that that we're that we're kind of dealing with on navigating at the moment and the first is the disability Royal Commission. So you know 222 recommendations across 12 volumes. I'm going to just confess that I have not read it all and but you know, big importance changing summaries of all. That's right. That's exactly or ChatGPT. Just tell me what you really mean.
Yes.
And uh, so it's a big change, um and and it's actually societal level change. So it it will shape legislation and policy at a broad level and but of course that always philtres down to to to the what they do as well. The second one is the NDIS review recommendations published late last year. So 26 recommendations with 139 actions, we know that the government is due to respond to those recommendations in March. You know fingers crossed because I think we're all dying with anticipation, right. Anything that would be great but it but it's gonna be a five year transition I think you know so. So we've got a little bit of space there. So that's that's the second big thing and that is NDIS specific and and it's profound. And then we've got the third which is pace which isn't it change but the NDA is using it as an opportunity to make some other changes as well. So, so three big areas of of change and and if I were to speak to the impact of those changes, there's probably 3 areas of of impact. So the the 1st is that there is going to be complexity in cohesively integrating all of these changes, the changes that come from the the Royal Commission, the NDIS review and there'll be no single point of truth. And that's frustrating because sometimes what we find is that when change comes from different places sometimes those changes contradict and conflict with each other. I mean you just have to look at how the NDIA and the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission sometimes contradict and and you know I'm conflict and feel like that is normal for anything in the NDIS context is that there are no definitive answers to things this exactly right it started that will be an issue that we have to navigate is you know those three big areas of change are going to have conflict and contradiction and and and sometimes when you're running a business that's very difficult to navigate but that's but sometimes when you're living as a person with disability that's a really exciting opportunity. So that that lack of clarity can be can be an opportunity. So that's the big area. That's the first big area of impact. I think the second area impact is with pace. So I'm going to go there next because I think that is the most pressing change right now and that's why we're gonna talk about that in quite a bit of detail later on. But the transition to pace is and is going to continue to be really freaking painful, really painful and that is more because of bugs in functionality. And so, you know, we run size of the implementation is just like, I mean not tea. Yeah, together never a good thing. Good times. Yeah. And so, you know, whenever we run workshops on pace, we always start by saying there are features and there are bugs and most of those features we can live with. It's the bugs that are really dragging us down at the moment. So I know that there's a lot of providers out there that are spending, putting a lot of admin time and energy into navigating the box so that that that's it was always going to be painful and it it's definitely living up to expect expectations. It's definitely painful, yeah. After resilience, resilience is absolutely. And I think community of practise is helpful as well. So you know, I think The thing is that you can't take these issues home because nobody at home cares about pay unless you live in my house, right? In which case, you're so fine.
Your audience. Pick your audience, Audience. Start the networking group based on pace our our growth and take it out.
Um, no. But, but, but. I think community of practise could be helpful in those times of frustration because it helps to be able to have a cry and a laugh at the same time.
The third area of impact is the the massive changes that are likely to come out of the NDS review recommendations and and these are the most profound for some services more than others. I think that we need to acknowledge that but but the real issue I think right now as of today which is the 28th of February 2024, it's actually 14 past four for anyone who wants to live on the Eastern coast, but 344 right now at this point in time the biggest issue that we're experiencing with regards to these NDS review recommendations is the uncertainty. You know it's like that we are all living on a knife edge waiting for the government to announce how they intend to respond to the recommendations and when they intend to respond. And until then there is not a huge amount that we can do, but we'll talk a little bit about some of the things that we can do. But but I think that that that that is kind of the environment that we're in terms of operating within a space of certainty. We won't have that until an unknown, right. So we focus on what we can control in the here and now. That's right. That's right. Yeah. And I particularly, you know, I, I don't know if if most of the people in the room are people who manage other people or people who own their own businesses, um, but but you know, part of the work that we need to do is we need to alleviate the anxiety or what makes space to hold the people who work for us and the participants who work with us. And sometimes that makes us feel a little bit like, what about me? And that's hard as well. So that would be so good just to know what the government's going to take on board that will make a big deal. Yeah, Yeah, for sure.
But then in the hearing now, so I think you you've said to me in the past, while all of this change is inevitable, the one thing that won't change at least in the immediate and foreseeable future is pace. So that is why the emphasis at the moment is to nail pace and to integrate that as well as we can. Yeah, Yeah. And and also because we are seeing participant plans under pace, you can't put your head in the sand anymore about this because it's happening.
This is just, it's happening right now. How it is. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Alright. So
I'm getting to the nitty gritty of understanding pace and the direct implications for providers with this new system.
Can we get into some direct implications of the PACE programme? Will platform itself? So how will it actually impact the day-to-day?
Yeah, so the impact that pace is going to have on your operations is going to depend on the kinds of services that you offer. And so if we start with what I'm going to call general providers and I'll just, I'll distinguish that from support coordinators and plan managers, right. So we're talking about support coordinators and plan managers separately. But but if we just start with general providers and and what you need to know and how it's going to impact And the first thing is um that the there is a little bit of a race structure for the funding flexibility and how, how, how funding works the funding structure I guess. And I think the biggest change is that we have a new support category under core which is the home and living support category. And so up until now or in in plans that are not yet under PACE, Home and living is part of that flexible core support budget under assistance.
Exactly UH life. But under Pace um, Home and Living supports. And and I'll specify that we're talking about SIL, ILO and medium term accommodation.
Excuse me, I have COVID UM. So those 3 support, it's like too much information. Sally. Sorry, no,
The supports have been pulled out of flexible core support and given their own new support category, home Living. So Home and living is a new support category under core and that funding is no longer part of flexible core supports. It is what the NIH is referring to as stated at the support category level. What that means is that if a person has home and living funding in that support category, it can only be spent on home and living supports.
Now it can be spent flexibly on home and living supports, but it can only be spent on those supports. So of all of the and there are other structural changes but but that's really the one that has the biggest implications. Probably the the thing that is upsetting most providers is the replacement of service bookings with my provider endorsement for agency managed funds. So I I want to start by by clarifying that that it is only for agency managed funds that are my provider endorsement will replace service bookings and and and you know as we go on in time fewer and fewer fewer people agency managing but for those providers that work primarily with people who agency manage their funds this is a little bit scary because.
People do not have to endorse a my provider even if their agency managing their funds. A little bit of a caveat to that. Home and living supports, SDA and behaviour support must have and My provider allocated. If the person is plan managing those funds then the plan manager could be the My provider. But for everything else that is agency managed, people can choose to have a My provider endorsed or not choose to have a My provider endorsed.
And the reason I'm sorry, well, I think that the reason for the reason behind that is to give participants the opportunity to be more deeply engaged in how their funds are spent and to have to give them more control about how how they're spent. And and I'll explain that now because when a person agency managed this their funds and chooses not to have a my provider endorsed.
If a provider submits a request for payment through the portal as you do, the NTI isn't automatically gonna pay that provider. If it if it. If the provider is not endorsed, what they're gonna do is they're going to send an SMS message to the participant and all their nominee or or child representative are asking that participant, you know are you happy with this payment? Do you do you are you happy and yeah. And and the participant has up to seven days to dispute that payment. And so there's a couple of issues here for providers. The first issue is, well, I'm gonna be waiting at least seven days where it used to take, you know two days Max. If I submitted process, yeah it would be processed quickly. So that's now going to be 7 days. And and the other concern then is what happens if my participant disputes the claim and the participant disputes the claim, then the NIAAA looks into the claim. They need to do a little bit of investigation. And so there is some stuff and we can talk about that later on that the kinds of things that you can be doing to ameliorate the obvious risk of that. Yes. So that's a lot that can be done leading up to the point where you get to that point in things, Yes, for sure. Yeah. So that that's probably the biggest change that's concerning providers. Another concern is that there is limited access to plan information for general providers in the portal and and that is really part of the final change, which is that you may or may not know. The NDA published their supported decision making policy in April of last year and I would encourage you to to go and read that policy. It's really important but they're using PACE as an opportunity to operationalise, to implement that policy and really the the goal here is to encourage participants to take more control over their plans and how the funds are spent. And so you know some of the ways that we're seeing the the kind of implementation of the support decision making policy via Pace is through the reduction in access to plan information for providers. And I know that that's painful for providers, but I think we do have to respect that that information's private. You know, people do they have a choice about who gets to see it. And he does have the opportunity there is to engage more closely with your clients to have that conversation and that is part of your onboarding, onboarding process with your new clients. Like that's right. That is an open and honest conversation to have at the beginning for sure or an ongoing really. Yeah, yeah. And so we will talk a little bit more about that. The second thing is this, this my provider endorsement. You know, the the, the, the, the fact that people have the opportunity to say actually you know what this provide is new to me. I'm not ready to endorse them. I kind of work want to work with them for a couple of months see how I feel feel them out that that that is also another example of that supported decision making policy and practise and then consent arrangements have have changed as well and so the NDA is supporting participants to get more granular about who gets access to what and and and and and a request for consent can only come from the participant and their nominate or child representative. So those are the changes for general UM providers. The change of the additional changes for plan management for for support coordinators and psychosocial recovery coaches include that all support coordinators and psychosocial recovery coaches will have access to PACE. So the Pace provider portal, which is an awesome change and so registered and non registered support coordinators and recovery coaches will have access to
Pace that they will need to respond to the request for service in the Pace system. They have three days to to do that. Additional consent will be required to get access to detailed plan information. So just because the participant has endorsed you as their support coordinator doesn't mean you get access to the funding information. That's an additional step. And then this new reporting templates that that the mandatory reporting templates for implementation and progress reports, the plan managers some additional changes for example plan managers, you really need to understand the restructuring of funding. You need to understand what that means and for plan managers they they're the only providers that have functionality in Pace where they can actually use a self service function to initiate a relationship with the participant. For all other providers, including support coordinators and recovery coaches, that relationship initiation has to come from the participant, right. But for plan managers, they can send a message to the NDA that says this participants indicated they want me to be the plan manager. Debbie Ninja will get in touch with you because you know, so so those are the change manager can communicate internally via the system, whereas everyone else has to go via participant and then that comes in. Yeah, yeah, cool. That's right. Yeah, amazing. So, so, so those are those are the really kind of the day-to-day operational changes people have to navigate.
I don't really want to speculate because there's so much speculation out there at the moment with all the changes anyway. But in terms of time frames for pace to be the system of operation for. Yeah, here, now, like like there's so much investment at the moment in this system being right and just mentioning that bugs are very much a part of the course at the moment. It's it's literally a figuring out how to make this work situation. Like there's not gonna be any other changes. They're not gonna throw it out at one point because it just gets all too hard. Like we are staying in this course. I know they're committed. Yeah, At this point I mean they had their trial although not really sure they were trying. So you know that was their opportunity to say Nah not working, no, it's happening, it's definitely happening. And and so they they at the beginning which was around November, they said it was going to take 18 months to roll out. If they're on track, that means that, you know, we should be completely rolled out by beginning of Q2 in 2025.
But you know, I'd give them a little bit of leeway, maybe an extra 6 months on on that um. But but yeah, happening. And there's no denying there's there's no get your head out of the sand. It's happening. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I guess and the reason I say that it's more I just lost lightings for some reason more than the reason I say that is any sort of frustrations to do with the system can be redirected elsewhere. So as in, yes, there are bugs, yes, there are changes to your operations, but note those and then make some changes internally with how you go about your business and then use that energy elsewhere, I guess why I was flagging that. So this is it. Make it work for you. Yeah, cool, right?
So, alright, so we've got the operations. It's gonna make changes. Um. And I guess and we were talking, you were talking very big picture in terms of why these changes are being made for participants. What are some larger concepts in terms of what providers need to be thinking about. So we will get to the granular stuff shortly, but what are some bigger concepts say how we were talking about having the conversations with their participants initially like. So it seems to me that there's a really big emphasis on a lot more collaboration with participants as opposed to prescriptive methods of service delivery. So what are some some forward thinking concepts that providers can start thinking about that will then philtre down to their changes in operations. Yeah so so you might you might ask yourself what would be a reason why a person might dispute a claim that that might be good one. Right so, so, so because of course the the disputing of claims when there's no my provider allocated is is going to be a painful to to to deal with.
So you consider you know what are the reasons why people might do that and how can we ameliorate the risk that they will dispute a claim down the track. And I think that the that the kinds of things that we need to be thinking about are greater clarity, um, up front about the costs of your services and so itemised quotes, monthly statements that break things down. I want to add something in there and the thing I want to add in there is that um understand what you can and can't bill for and correct any core billing practises that you have. I'll give you a perfect example. I if you are delivering services in a metropolitan area, M modified Monash Model 1, you may charge up to 30 minutes provided travel in each direction if you're paying the the worker for that time, right. So that that that's the rule. I see providers that as a standard are charging 30 minutes to each participant for each delivery of support. They've clearly not understood that that is a cap, it's not a maximum. Yeah, right.
So if the participant lives 15 minutes away, you should only be charging 15 minutes, and only if you're paying the work for that time as well. And so the situation, yeah, it could be a logbook. There's lots of different in terms of auditions in that something that could eventually be like there's a paper trail yeah but but I think, I think that the the point that I wanna make, I'm sorry that paper trail, it's alright, is that are you billing for things that you shouldn't be billing for. Because I guarantee you if the participant gets a do you want to pay this invoice message from the national call centre and it's bigger than what they were expecting, they're gonna say no, I wanna dispute it and then when they look at it, they're going to see that you've actually been billing incorrectly all along. So make sure that there's no mistakes in your billing to start. Yes. Right. So just having a a quoting process to begin with, we'll put all of that fronts. Understanding the rules of what can and can't be charged is, is is important, yes. And then having inquired in process as well. But here's I think here's the piece that a lot of providers often forget is that we are providing services in a disability context. We estimate that about 80% of participants have some sort of complex communication support needs. Are you making that information available in a format that they understand? Because if yes, you're providing them with these detailed quotes and and you know, monthly statements, that doesn't mean that they're able to understand and process that information. And So what you want to do is you want to make sure that you're providing this information in ways that people can understand so that when they get that SMS from the National Centre, they've understood, Oh yeah, this was within my expectations and rather than going OHHHHH sticker shock, I wasn't expecting it to cost that much. So I think what it comes back to, you know, you asked me about, you know, what are those kind of high level things that provide us could be doing better. And I think that that categorically across the board all of us could be doing a better job in making our communications accessible to the people that we support. And you know as professionals in the NDISfind it extremely complex and we live and breathe it day to day. And so you know even families find this stuff complex you gotta have those conversations at the outset. You gotta provide that real clarity around what the cost of your supports will be and then you need to make sure that they've understood that not good enough to have it on page 25 of a 30 page service agreement. That's where I go to the service agreement. So it's still very well to get a like to download a template of a service agreement off the Internet and then modify it for your business. But if that information, if you don't understand it, and if you can't explain it to your participant in a way that they understand, then yeah, is it even worth doing it in the 1st place? So I'll point out the fact that registered providers, so you have to meet the practise standards. And the practise standards actually say that you're communicating your service agreement in a format that the participant is most likely to understand it, so you're required to do it anyway. So it doesn't say that participants, mum doesn't say the participants neighbour, it says the participant. And so service agreements need to be made available in easy read, simple English audio formats, video formats, guided conversations, whatever format it is that the participants most slightly understand. And I think if we do a better job with that up front then we will reduce the number of disputes. But coming back to what you were saying about like tracking kilometres and all that kind of stuff, have to have the evidence have evidence. Um, so, so you know, don't be putting in a request for payment for half an hour of non face to face unless you can show specifically on that date how was that non face to FaceTime spent? Because when the NDIS comes to kind of check it up, check into it, they're going to be saying show me the evidence, the trial for sure. Yeah. Um, OHP, there was something. Um,
oh, no. It's lost. It'll come back to me when we're in the middle of something else, but that's fine.
We've talked about this in the lead up to this conversation, The and prefacing all of this with. Currently it's a recommendation as opposed to an acknowledged and real change. But the the role of navigators in regards to support coordinators, recovery coaches and player managers,
I wanted to ask the question in terms of people who are currently in those roles providing amazing services. It is in their best interests to be all over all of these changes to remain upskilling and to be full bottles on all of this to to weather the next storm. And I just wanted to reiterate that from your perspective as well. Like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know you don't wanna you don't wanna be, you wanna stay up to date. You definitely want to stay up to date and I think, you know,I have a lot of people in my network that run support coordination businesses and psychosocial recovery businesses and and and I'm having lots of conversations with them about how they're managing it. You know, one thing, if you are like Yvette and me, you're a little bit type, you don't like surprises, right?
I don't like that might be OK, maybe I already know about that. Anyway, there's no way you can find something from me. So, so you know, something that I would probably be doing if I was the business owner for a service like that is I'd be doing a little bit of kind of scenario analysis up front. What I might have done is I might have said, you know, what are the scenarios that might that might happen and at the highest level it would be navigators. Go ahead, navigators. Don't go ahead. And then, you know, within the navigators go ahead. There might be like 3 different iterations of what that might look like. So you know, kind of map out what that might look like and then do yourself a little swat. Do you let stuff a little swat. In each scenario, what are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats? Just so that I can have a sense that yeah, no matter what comes my way, I kind of have a loose plan and that's what I would do to alleviate the anxiety. But. But but and like, if you don't have a mind like mine, then definitely, you know, staying up to date, going to his, you know, just just reading whatever you can read within reason, right? Yeah, Facebook, Communities of practise,
even LinkedIn at to some point is becoming a little bit swamped with speculation at the moment. So yeah, it's definitely a case of grain of salt with a lot of speculation that's out there. And yeah, I just wanted to emphasise what you're saying in terms of the skills that you have the experience have within the industry that that's not going to go away whatever the new iteration is. So it's it's literally a reinforce the knowledge and experience that you have and then for want to borrow a term that was overused and cover times, it's just be prepared for your next pivot I guess. Really. Yeah. So let me, I just want to show a little seed of hope. Yeah and and and and and and I'm putting this within within the context of we don't know, we don't, we don't know. But here's one of the fantastic recommendations is that disability supports and services will be delivered to people who don't have NDIS plans. Yeah. There are more people for us.
The support and whatever support that looks like for you, the opportunity could be growing. And so kind of try to remain optimistic for, you know, next few weeks while we wait. Yeah, totally sorry. I'm getting very mindful that our time is coming to an end. I just wanted to in terms of operational actual change and ways that providers can lean into change and some ways that they can. Some areas that they can investigate themselves say like IT or billing like how would you suggest that people attack that? Yeah, So, yeah. And you kind of just touched on two things. So it's.
OK. No, it's good. So uh, you lean on your IT providers. Um yeah, CRM's, whatever you're using, make sure that they're pace ready. I think you would know by now if they weren't right but but you want to double check that they are.
Look at your billing practises. If you're supporting people who agency manage their funds, you know, I hear providers that are billing once a month or you know once every two months and and then sometimes they put in a request for payment and the funds are all depleted. It's like what were you thinking? So you know regular least once a week, real time. You know talk to your your IT providers, are there ways that they can facilitate real-time billing so that you are reducing the risk that you will have bad debt. So that's the that's that one billing
practise IT. I talked a little bit about service agreements and and making sure that we have conversations in advance about what the cost of our supports are. Understand your obligations for continuity of support. You may have obligations to provide support to people even when their funds run out. But also consider how you can ring fence those obligations by being really clear with people. Again, service agreements, but making those service agreements accessible for people, be really clear with them, you know, you know how how much time will pass before you part ways with them. So some clarity around those obligations. Yeah, tracking bad debt obviously is an important one. And if you have a board that you report to and then your board probably should be involved in tracking that on a more regular basis, I would say every board meeting and just stay informed, you know, so you know, know where the reliable sources of information are so that you can stay informed. Yes, Amazing.
Alright, that's Hapes. Um, Erin, did you wanna jump on with any questions? I'm sure my notifications have been peeing the whole time, so I'm sure there's a few that people would like to ask.
Yes, we do have a few questions, so I'll just go through those now. Uh, so stepping back to pace, we had a couple of questions about how best to ask your clients to endorse you as their my provider. So yeah, Judy asked that question as well as Sally wants to know if participants have been educated about that. So if that might change the conversation around how you ask them. I know you said honest and open conversations are important, but yeah Sally, how would you tackle
OHHHHH yeah, so, so really, really good UM and UH and and UH, you know I always encourage providers to educate participants on changes that come through pace and and we do that partly as a customer service, you know country. You know we want to be seen as helpful and knowledgeable and but we also do it because we know that educated clients reduce headaches for us. Yeah. And so for sure. Yeah so you know so so so to kind of use that maybe as an as an idea for how would we ask people to endorse us might be giving them a resource. It could be a video resource. Now again thinking accessibility, right. Is video more likely to be accessible for people or does it need to be in a a simple English resource but give them a resource that that helps them understand what's happening with pace. What are the changes and what can I expect.
Service bookings are going away uh and uh and they're being replaced with my providers and you have the opportunity to endorse us as a my provider and and here's the benefits for you. So as a as a participant the benefit of endorsing a provider is I'm not getting those bloody SMS messages from the National Health Centre. Right. We're just kind of your routine and you don't need to have any more attention paid to it. Yeah, I haven't seen one of those SMS messages it, but it's gotta be pretty gravy I imagine. You know it's you know and so like here are the benefits for you. But also consider that the the, the you have also have an opportunity to really build trust. Don't don't use undue influence to get people to endorse you. That's not going to build trust. But you could even say I respect your decision not to endorse us. I'd love to give you a month to get to know us. And then I'll come, I'll come and I'll revisit.
Yeah. And and and that is that is, that's so when I'm trying to choose service providers, I'm always looking for the ones that feel to me like they get it. And sometimes it's those little things that we do that really indicate that they respect a person's right to be more engaged in how their funds are spent. They and it respects their right to take a little bit of time to to trust your trust for sure. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. In the chat. Who Sally asked one of those questions. She's just added that she will happily educate, but is finding it hard to understand the nuts and bolts. So what actually does the participant have to do to endorse them as a provider? Do you want to let them know the basic steps so they can pass that on to their participants? Yeah. So I would suggest, Sally, that you go to the improvements website. It's optimistically called the improvements website, does that anyway. So there's an improvements website, go to the participants section. So I could, I could speak it to you, but then probably, yeah, there's so many resources. Yeah, if you go to the participants section of the improvements website and, you know, cut and paste it, stick it into chat, ChatGPT and say create your sound friendly, yeah he's he's like my PT. Sometimes they get it wrong. So you do wanna edit it, but you know create a resource from what's already there. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. But that participant section of the improvements website will give you all of the kinds of things that you need to support participants. With that, I want to give you a tip. Can I give you a hot tip? Before we go for another question? Of course that endorsement process is instant. So if it's instant, if a participant calls the national call centre to endorse a provider and the person on the other end of the phone says OHT, yeah, we might take always put voices on, don't I? We might take a week to take, a week to get that done and in instruction. I know this is something that you can do right now.
Disappointed to say I'm not getting off the phone until you've told me that it's done. Hmm. It's just one of those bugs that's creating a lot of administrative burden for providers. Participants are calling to get it endorsed. They're being told it'll be done over the next week. It doesn't happen. Participants are calling to get endorsed. So. So let participants know on whatever resource you create create for them. It can happen instantaneously. Tell the person you're not going to get off the phone until it's done.
And it was like an hour to get to the National call Centre in the 1st place. You don't wanna be having to call back and make it, make it happen then. Yeah, in that one call, Yes. Now I popped the link to that improvements website there. It might not be the exact page you talk about, Sally, I think that's the provider page, but I'm sure everyone can look at that and just have a look around and you'll find lots of hopefully helpful stuff there. Stacy put a comment in response to that question saying perhaps service agreements. I just wanted to get your take on that really. Is putting in a service agreement something like you will make us your my provider, is that something that's OK to do? Is that as long as it's not pressurising them too pressurised too and and and look it's The thing is that um that the majority of service agreements are written by lawyers. That it's it is litigious language makes you feel like you're being scolded already like you've already done something wrong and so I think you'd be really careful. I look I'm I'm actually not a fan of service agreements as a proxy to communication. Yeah. As as as a replacement to proper communication. Just because you've got it on page five of your service agreement doesn't mean that the person's read it and understood it. And if you are truly committed to building relationships, then you will have a conversation about it. So yeah, you can pop it on your service agreement if you want, but I don't think that that's going to fix the problem for you. And and of course, you have a business, you have a right as a business owner to say we only work with people when they endorse us. But there's nothing more important in the disability landscape than your reputation.
And I don't think that's very good for your reputation. Hmm. Yeah. Personal subjective opinion. Yeah. Trust and transparency for sure. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Uh, we've had Ramish ask, is there a way to tell if the participant has chosen a provider, as they're my provider. Just wondering if this can be a step before commencing services to potentially avoid invoicing issues at a later stage. Can people see if in the post portal it'll have my under my relation under provider relationships or my relationships,
It will have, um, whether or not you have, uh, um uh like a verification tape or something. Yeah, people will. You can. You can't see that in the in the piece portal. Yeah. Yeah. If they've got a different provider though, that's not you. Like can you see if they've. No, no, you can't see it, you know. And that makes sense, right? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Obviously you can see the status of claims. Judy is asked can you see if customers have rejected invoices and things like that in there. How much detail do you get about the invoices? Do you know, um, uh, I I think you're talking about submitting claimants payments through the portal and and look, I actually don't know, I'd have to, I'd have to find out what it actually looks like when they when they decline. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Yep, no worries. Now this is a bit of a techie question from Carl. Are we expecting API integrations from Pace portal or will they continue to be from the My Place portal for the foreseeable future?
Um, look and I'm not techie, but I think you can expect, I mean and this is part of the sales for that. One of the reasons why the I's position to Salesforce is because it it's easier to integrate and it's also easier to adapt and change. We know that at the moment payments continue to be processed through the existing the old portal and there are API's. I think that you will see APIs, but I don't know enough about them and I may never know enough about them.
That's why there's tech people in there. Question for the tech team
We could um yeah yeah that's cool. But one thing I will say in fact and you might want to do this colour if you're if you're like like a tech cake, is that there is a technical document for Pace that talks about the function, the technical functionality of Pace and I'm pretty sure that that would have a little bit more information about that and and it also talks a little bit about potential functionality that when they're not using right now but they might use in the future. Yeah, we can find that and we'll put that to, yeah, put that with the resources for sure. Fantastic. Any improvements? Great. Yes,
We had a question from Happy Therapy, but that sort of talk about something else. I'll come back to that one in a second. We've had a couple of new ones pop up. Ramesh has asked do we get some notification or information if a participant endorses us or revokes us as am I provider. You said there's that tick in there. Do they get any email if someone invoices notifications? No, you don't get an email. So, so, so that's the other thing that you need to do is you need to come into place on a regular basis and there's a notification centre that's gonna tell you if you've got any new or changed relationships. Yeah, fantastic. Change relationships. Yeah. Fantastic. Um, one more question about endorsements here from Eleanor. Could you please talk a little bit about the differences for behaviour, support, endorsement requirements to general providers? Yeah, so not really different. The only thing that's different is that you have to have to have my provider allocated for home and living behaviour support and SDA. But if a person is plan managing their funds, then that plan manager could be the My Provider. And so it really what that means is that behaviour support practitioners that are using that those behaviour support support items in the new behaviour support support category, Home and living providers and SDA providers won't have the same issues in relation to a participant choosing Nottingham. Yeah, right. Because they have to have a My Provider allocated.
So it's. Yeah, so, so it's gonna be that quick payment. They're not gonna get those texts and have to worry about them. That's right. That's fantastic. Yeah. OK. We'll go back to that question from Happy Therapy now, which I think is a really interesting one. Said we're thinking of becoming NDIS registered to have access to more NDIS clients. Obviously you can have registered clients then sorry agency managed. Are there changes coming in this area and if so, when would you expect it? That is a big question to answer, Sally. So and that's she's pretty easy question to answer, Um, because you know, we know that one of the recommendations is about UM registration processes. Um. So I can't tell you because I don't know what recommendations are going to be approved. But if that recommendation is approved, then yes, it will have some implications. We just have no idea exactly what that's going to look like at this stage. Something will likely happen. But when or how, Yeah, yes, it's definitely, it's an analysis of how long that process would take for you, what the immediate return is in that time frame. And that's just one of your business decisions moving forward, I guess. Yeah, that's right. That's right. But, but I would, you know, if it's something that interests you, I would suggest that you go to the recommendations. There's a recommendations website. Go to the recommendations and read specifically what the recommendations are about the registration that what they're suggesting, you know, so, so and then model to that, Read it, find out what, what they've got to say. And. And and then that will give you a little bit more insight into it. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Really good suggestion there. I think that's all of the questions covered. It's amazing. Yeah. So I'll drop out again. Thanks. Brilliant. Well, that's good timing anyway, as we get to the end of our hour. Yeah. So we've made it to the end of the webinar, but obviously the conversation doesn't have to end here. Join us in Kenora. Yes. Even for service providers, it's free. There
is a provider's only channel within Kinorafor these conversations to continue within a closed and safe environment that's fully moderated by us, the coaches and we have other experts that can jump in and and assist us with our answering all of these infinite questions. Sally, thank you so much for joining us today and for your insights, immeasurable impact and awesomeness. Thank you for the actual real operational changes that everyone here today and to those that will watch the recording later on can make to their day-to-day NDIS businesses.
We really do hope that all of these changes are for and I mean ultimately that's this change is for the better. And continuous change is I guess something that we should get comfortable with really because ultimately it is to improve the outcomes for people living in this building. So we're evolving. Yeah. And and you know this is The thing is that that that I've been involved in the NGS since day one. We have changed every single day since then. So we're evolving, things are getting better, but change is just a normal part of life is so get used to that. Brilliant.
Thank you, everyone, for being here today. We'll send you an email with a link to the video once we've processed everything and of course, all of the resources that Sally is referred to today. And it will be within Kinora to continue the discussion there. I'm Ivette, that was Erin, and this is Sally Coddington from DSC. There's Erin. Hi. Hi, Erin. Thank you again for being here today for joining us and we'll see you in Kinora soon. Have a great day.
Navigating through your own NDIS plan changes and still have questions?
