Published on the 10/11/2016 | Written by Anthony Caruana
‘Massive shift’ presents opportunity for technological disruption…
The introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), increasing dependence on private service providers and the opportunities afforded by new technology are creating a perfect storm for companies providing services those who require care or assistance. It is also presenting an environment which is ripe for disruption by using modern technology – and Better Caring is one company seeking to do just that.
Co-founder Tony Charara has seen the challenges facing this sector and has established a service that makes it easier for people with a disability to connect with service providers. The benefit of the system Better Caring offers is a direct connection between service providers and their clients. Thus, said Charara, both parties benefit with less money spent on administrative overhead, resulting in more in the pockets of service providers, as well as increased care levels for clients.
Better Caring is on online service that allows people with a disability to look through a “catalogue” of care givers and choose the ones that best suit their health needs.
Charara and co-founder Peter Stutt came from the finance industry, with experience in funding technology companies. Stutt’s parents were getting older, but wanted to stay in their own home for a long as possible rather than moving to a residential care facility.
“When Peter tried to source that from existing community care models, it was clear that there was a lot of dissatisfaction in the industry both from the client side and the care worker side,” Charara explained.
The sector has been dominated by not-for-profit operators performing a scheduling and rostering function characterised by significant overhead.
“Typically, the cost of care might be $6 an hour on average and the care worker gets $22 an hour,” Charara noted.
A good example of the level of overhead comes from the heavily regulated and government funded aged care sector. A level 4 package of care, said Charara, costs about $47,000 per year to provide. For that, the client receives about 12 hours per week of support.
However, Charara said their service delivers almost twice the level of care, or about 22 hours, with care workers earning about $35 per hour.
In other words, the carers are paid more and deliver more services for the same total cost. Almost all of this comes from lower case management costs as Better Caring claims it can reduce the administrative costs by around 20 percent.
In addition, people with a disability desire an emotional connection with their care workers. This is something the current model struggles to accommodate; while at the same time, clients don’t have great visibility of which carers are coming to their homes on a specific day.
“There’s a real opaqueness in that model,” said Charara.
Better Caring allows clients to filter through profiles and on things that are important to the clients. This gives clients more choice in the transaction. There’s also greater transparency around quality, Charara claimed.
“We have two focuses,” he said. “In-home care for the aged, and in-home care for the disability space. Both are going through pretty significant regulatory changes. In the disability sector, there’s the NDIS. In aged care, there’s the introduction of Consumer Directed Care (CDC).”
Better Caring is still in its early stages. Collecting data about the quality of carers is in progress and integrating that into what consumers see when visiting the site is progressing.
Charara said Better Caring is a marketplace with controls; although the government’s existing processes have high overheads, a part of that comes from the regulation, certification and monitoring of care providers. Charara said they have three levels of controls in place to prevent the exploitation of a person with a disability from unscrupulous operators and carers.
“The first is we have a 13-step on-boarding process.”
Of the approximately 7500 registrations received from care workers, about 10 percent have been approved, he said. This includes police checks, Working with Children checks, reviews of qualifications which can be uploaded to Better Caring’s site and reference checks.
“We also have community feedback and user feedback loops and we also have a support team that reviews messages sent through the site.”
Better Caring includes a messaging system as well a place for carers and clients to enter notes about care sessions. And Charara said the company has negotiated insurance coverage for any session of care booked through the site.
There are about a million people requiring aged care and another 500,000 needing other forms of in-home assistance. That number is expected to increase as the population ages – and Better Caring believes it is tapping into a growing market ripe for disruption.
