Governance Challenges for Small to Medium Aged Care Boards Post Royal Commission – Building and Keeping Better Boards.

Friday 14 October 2022

12:00pm – 12:30pm

Speaker Bio

Julie is a Partner in the Aged Care and Retirement Living team at Thomson Geer and leads the Brisbane Health & Aged Care team. The team is a unique combination of  lawyers and clinical consultants. Julie’s team forms part of the larger national Health & Aged Care team.

Julie specialises in providing regulatory compliance advice to residential aged care providers, home care providers and retirement living operators. Julie is acknowledged as a leading provider of legal services to these industries. She provides advice in relation to all aspects of non-compliance including sanction and accreditation decisions, coroner’s matters, major incident investigations and workplace health and safety investigations.

She advises a large range of aged care providers and retirement living operators including publicly listed groups, private groups and not-for-profits.

Julie has a Masters of Law with a major in health law and is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Abstract 

Governance challenges for small to medium aged care boards post Royal Commission – Building and keeping better Boards.

The Royal Commission made significant recommendations into aged care governance requirements.

In the new landscape, it is a significant challenge for small to medium providers to attract great Board members to join their board. In the current landscape where regulation is ever intensifying it is often an even greater challenge to keep great Board members. 

New legislation introduces major changes in relation to governance requirements which will in turn bring challenges and opportunities for providers both big and small, for profit and not for profit. The changes include concepts that will however present unique challenges for small to medium providers who may not have the same resources as large providers. 

Providers must ensure that their Board members are confident that the Provider is well run and meeting not only the new governance requirements but all existing governance and compliance requirements. Board knowledge is key to compliance and stability; it is also essential for effective succession planning.

One of the most significant challenges for providers will be to attract and retain board members to enable the provider to demonstrate the Board has the right skills, experience and knowledge to satisfy the new requirements. Once those Board members are engaged there are very onerous requirements imposed on those Board members to satisfy themselves (and make appropriate declarations on behalf of the provider) about the adequacy of the provider’s systems to deliver safe and quality care to consumers.