Australia’s Ageing Population and the Reality of Aged Care Reforms

There’s never been a better time to talk about aged care than now. With the Aged Care Act coming into effect 1 November, providers face increasing pressure to modify their processes to comply with a system that’s already struggling to meet the complex needs of older Australians. From significant workforce shortages, regulatory uncertainty, and escalating operational costs, aged care workers are being asked to do more with less. And every year, more Australians are living longer, often with more chronic and complex health needs. As demand increases for aged care, so does the challenge of building a larger, better-trained workforce while delivering care that is both efficient and deeply personalised.

As providers, the question for you is how can you address both of these needs without sacrificing efficiency or standard of care.The answer lies in how you manage complexity, workforce planning, and operational agility, all critical areas that the recent reforms are reshaping. I’ve got some ideas, but first let’s dive into the reforms and what they mean for you.

A Look into the Reform Landscape

The government has committed to a massive reform agenda, beginning with legislation such as the new Aged Care Act, improved quality standards, increased home care packages, and enhanced oversight mechanisms. But systemic reform is never simple—particularly when change must be delivered across a sector that spans residential homes, home care services, healthcare interfaces, and informal carers.

The overall goal of these reforms seems straightforward: to improve the care and rights of aging Australians. However, when we peel back the layers of each reform with a focus on operational impact, it becomes more complex. One of the expected challenges the in-home care workforce can expect is pressure on care delivery from rising costs.

From awards with increasing wages and growing demand for trained staff, to mounting administrative requirements and more personalised, consumer-directed care plans, the operational cost of delivering aged care is rising fast. These aren’t just monetary costs, but time costs too pulling staff away from care delivery and into compliance, reporting, and service planning.

Unless providers can unlock new efficiencies, these pressures will undermine the financial sustainability of home care services, ultimately resulting in fewer care hours delivered. That’s the real risk. It’s why the reforms must be matched with smarter systems, stronger workforce planning, and modernised technology.

In short, recent aged care reforms place a stronger emphasis on delivering flexible, client-centred care while improving transparency, efficiency, and service quality. Providers are now challenged to meet higher standards of care, ensure better workforce management, and adapt to new funding models. All while dealing with increasing complexity in rostering and service delivery.It’s a tough operational balancing act right now, but we’re all in this together.

Getting Ahead of the Curve

So, reforms are coming and seemingly placing a bigger burden on an already overburdened system. Don’t get me wrong, some of the changes are needed for aged care clients and in the end will result in higher standards of care, more informed decision making on both the provider end and the client end, and a scalable foundation to long-term care for a quickly aging population.

Let’s go back to the challenges at hand. How can we offset the impact of these new inefficiencies so as not become such a burden on providers? This is where smarter, scalable rostering and scheduling become not just beneficial, but essential to survival and success under the new system.

We speak to a lot of providers who recognise how difficult rostering and scheduling is, and just how much the quality of rostering and scheduling can impact their performance, not only in:

• The number of clients they can serve,
• The wellbeing of their staff,
• Quality of service,
• Retention of clients, and
• Their ability to balance care needs and costs to protect margins.

Almost without fail, our prospective customers feel like they haven’t cracked this chestnut. We hear them point to a common set of symptoms:

• We struggle to retain new support workers,
• We have a high ratio of schedulers to support workers, and despite this, our scheduling team is over-worked and burnt out,
• There is a large gap in performance between our best planners and our newbies,
• Our staff utilisation is low, and we spend a lot of time on the road,
• We experience serious overtime costs, and often have overtime baked into our schedules,
• We still struggle to cover services, and often can’t lock in visits until the last minute.

These symptoms point in the same direction: that the classically manual approach to home care rostering and scheduling is no longer meeting the needs of the industry, and that a breakthrough is needed to address these problems and support a sustainable and future-proof delivery of care for the modern provider.

Optimised Planning Using Commercial Mathematics

This is where mathematical optimisation comes in. Mathematical optimisation is a sophisticated algorithm-based technology that has delivered widespread efficiencies to sectors like Aviation and Logistics. Over the past 3 years, Biarri has taken its expertise in these domains to the home care sector, and tailored a software solution with highly specialised mathematical optimisation algorithms for the Australian home care market. The Biarri software has helped customers  like Australian Unity achieve new levels of operational efficiencies and sustainable delivery of care. 

The algorithms automate and optimise rostering and scheduling, and ensure  that staff are deployed efficiently, reducing the need for overtime and limiting reliance on expensive agency staff. In addition, Biarri’s algorithms remove much of the time-consuming work of manually rostering and scheduling to free up valuable management time and reduce administrative overhead. Lastly, all rostering and scheduling decisions made within the solution comply with relevant labour laws and regulations.

In an environment where reform compliance, funding efficiency, and service quality are critical, Biarri’s optimisation tools simplify complexity and position providers for success.

• Optimising workforce planning to deliver better continuity and client satisfaction,
  
• Maximising contracted hours while reducing costly idle time,
  
• Automating rostering to manage operational burden and sharpen focus on quality care, and
  
• Enhancing adaptability so your teams can deliver flexible, responsive services under the new funding model.

With optimised scheduling, reduced travel times, and robust compliance management, Biarri’s solution ensures that aged care providers like you stay competitive and sustainable in a challenging market.

Ready to face reforms? Here’s a quick guide on the reforms you can share with your team.

TALK TO US ->