Celebrating 21 years at Telstra Health’s Aged Care User Groups

Telstra Health recently held our Residential Aged Care User Groups across Australia throughout the month of August.

Held in Brisbane, Newcastle, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, and Adelaide, these sessions are offered to all residential aged care clients. This year marked a pivotal moment as we celebrated our 21st year of providing innovative solutions to the aged care sector. Our 2023 Residential Aged Care User Groups saw record attendance in many states, making these User Groups the biggest and most successful ones to date.

With the theme of celebration, our team shared some of the highlights from the past 21 years, including launching seven residential aged care solutions, securing six awards for our innovative offerings, and marking the proud achievement of being Australia’s leading provider of clinical aged care software; with over 60,000 beds utilising our Clinical Manager software and more than 50,000 beds benefiting from our Medication Management software.

Our User Groups also provided the opportunity to look ahead at some of the upcoming and long-term innovations in store for our residential aged care clients.

Supporting government and industry changes

Telstra Health is working closely with the Department of Health and Aged Care to ensure our software supports upcoming Monthly Care Statement, Aged Care Quality Standard and My Health Record changes. As well as showcasing these government related enhancements, our User Groups provided the opportunity to demonstrate recent and upcoming Australian National Aged Care Classification (AN-ACC) tools in our Clinical Manager and Resident Manager solutions; including calculators, reporting features, and clinical tagging.

Ensuring clients can easily report on data for the National Quality Aged Care Mandatory Indicator Program (QI) has also been a priority, with new reports showcased at our User Groups that are designed to help streamline the data submission process.

Showcasing upcoming software enhancements

Upcoming software enhancements were also previewed, including reports to enhance providers’ financial compliance reporting for room management in Resident Manager, and leave management data collection for QI reports and alerts related to AN-ACC management in Clinical Manager.

New feature demonstrations

Clients at our Aged Care User Groups benefited from live demonstrations of the latest features included in our CareKeeper app and MedPoint module.

MedPoint, which received the Merit Award at the 2023 Victorian iAwards in July, is an electronic National Residential Medication Chart (eNRMC) conformant module that seamlessly connects aged care facilities, prescribers and pharmacies. For added risk reduction, Telstra Health provides a fully connected residential aged care solution to ensure one source of truth for clinical, care, medication and eNRMC data with their combined Medication Management and Clinical Manager software.

CareKeeper, which was honoured with a Merit Award at the 2022 Victorian iAwards, is a simple to use mobile application that enables care staff to quickly view, action and record care in real-time. Both solutions have proven fast favourites of clients, with significant uptake since their launches.

New projects on the horizon

Our User Groups were also an opportunity to showcase some new projects that are currently under development.

Telstra Health has been working closely with RMIT University and the Digital Health CRC to create a Frailty Dashboard, which is now in its final stages of review. The Frailty Dashboard will use resident data captured in Clinical Manager to offer valuable insights for improved care decisions. This includes alerting staff to residents that are at risk of hospitalisation so that appropriate measures can be put into place.

Activity based costing is another project we were proud to present at our User Groups. Following the expansion of the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority (IHACPA), Telstra Health is working closely with PowerHealth to develop a way of predicting and tracking costs associated with care delivery, facility management and operational activities. This functionality promises to enhance the financial management of aged care and provide greater transparency.

Our User Groups also included engaging workshops that provided clients the opportunity to network, exchange valuable operational strategies with fellow aged care providers, and contribute to Telstra Health’s product roadmap.

We would like to thank all residential aged care clients that attended our 2023 Aged Care User Groups and look forward to welcoming you back in 2024.