Maximising quality
of life for the
people we
support

Our Quality and Risk team work with
Northcott’s programs and services to
ensure we deliver high quality, best practice
services above industry benchmarks, with
our customers at the centre.

Highlights

Complex support and customer risk

29 referrals closed

Northcott strives to support our customers’ right to make their own choices, even if those choices involve risks that may go against the advice of allied health professionals.

This year, through our Quality of Life Panels, we helped 18 customers make informed decisions to pursue options different from what allied health professionals recommended. We worked with them to create plans that ensured their choices were supported as safely as possible.

Additionally, our End of Life Panel accepted 11 Advanced Care Plans or Advanced Care Directives outlining instructions to receive or not receive certain life-saving measures. In considering these choices, we worked closely with the customer, their family, guardians, allied health professionals and service coordinators.

Complex Health Coordination Clinic

This year we set up the Northcott Complex Health Coordination Clinic, a dedicated medical and health consultant service for Northcott customers with emerging healthcare needs. People with disability often face unique and complex health challenges. While many of these needs can be addressed by a customer’s GP, specialist expertise is sometimes required. This clinic brings together a consultant physician, specialist geriatrician, the customer’s regular GP and Northcott’s Clinical Governance Team who work together to improve the overall health and wellbeing of a customer.

Health and Functional Decline Tool

Working with Northcott Innovation (NI) and Western Sydney University’s School of Nursing, Northcott piloted a new health tool with our Supported Independent Living service. The Health and Functional Decline Tool tracks a customer’s health data over time, identifying changes in weight, sleep patterns, mobility, behaviour, hospital presentations, medication usage, new diagnoses and swallowing issues

Our Healthcare and Clinical Governance teams use the tool to provide expert health navigation and support where patterns of change have been detected. Customers showing signs of health decline are linked to our Complex Health Coordination Clinic.

Risk management reimagined

This year we redesigned Northcott’s Risk Management System, Noggin, to give our staff an accessible, user-friendly portal for reporting incidents, hazards, complaints and grievances. The “New Noggin” is a guided tool for recognising and responding to risk, and continuous improvement. It has resulted in faster and more effective change to improve customer and workforce safety.

Business continuity planning

Recent events, including COVID-19, bushfires, floods and cyber-attacks, have highlighted the need for Northcott to be fully prepared.  We have formed a working group to ensure Northcott has measures in place if a major disruption or outage occurs. Staff from across the organisation participated in simulated emergency situations to upskill and test potential solutions. Through this we have developed a Business Continuity Plan and action plan to ensure staff can support customers and each other during a major event.

Workforce support framework

Our Quality and Risk team participated in a project with Ability First Australia to identify key success factors in providing complex care support and managing associated risks. This project, which involves eight other service providers, aims to develop evidence-based guidelines to assist service providers in planning their support services and negotiating with the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) for adequate resources and funding to build a more capable workforce. A draft report has been created, advocating for the NDIA to improve funding outcomes for the most complex NDIS participants.