Older Australians who have served our country are eligible for special health support. Just like the schemes for NDIS and Aged Care, these supports are government funded and help veterans stay healthy and independent.
There are two common programs available:
- A ‘basic’ program called Veteran’s Home Care (VHC) designed for low care needs. This is similar to CHSP for Aged Care that provides assistance for things like domestic tasks, personal care, respite care, and home and garden maintenance.
- More complex or higher needs care are provided under ‘Community Nursing’ (CN). As the name implies, this covers more clinical type care.
Community Nursing has similarities to NDIS as well as Aged Care Home where:
- Providers need to apply
- Demonstrate their capability
- Agree to certain T&Cs and fee schedules
Why are NDIS or Aged Care providers interested?
Providers are drawn to the similarities in the type of care provided.
For many providers, they would view this addition as a new compliance requirement, as they may already offer similar care operationally. E.g. Providers currently registered for ‘High Intensity Daily Supports’ are likely to have staff with necessary nursing skills to support veterans.
Quality requirements
An existing NDIS or Aged Care service provider will already have some coverage of the requirements. These include topics like complaints and incident management and an overall requirement for a Quality Management System. However, these will need to be extended to cover veterans. There are also some additional requirements that may be new to both schemes.
The process
Refer to the links below in the references to find out more, but in short, for DVA Community Nursing, it requires a completion of an application with the provision of necessary supporting information. Small plug from us: we offer specific DVA policies, procedures and supporting documents to support your application. These are offered to our existing QMS customers as we can load them directly into your web application.
The market
DVA website publishes the names of providers by state on their website. The following is a summary of this information:
Total of 397 Organisations. With about 349 only focussing on 1 state. Others offer services across multiple states.
State/Territory | ACT | NSW | NT | QLD | SA | TAS | VIC | WA |
Number of Providers | 13 | 148 | 10 | 122 | 18 | 19 | 127 | 29 |
References
How to become a DVA approved community nursing provider
CNS16 – Department of Veterans’ Affairs Community Nursing Services Invitation
