Emergencies arise in everyone's lives; they are unpredictable and cannot be planned for. People with disability and their families need to be able to draw on immediate disability support when these emergencies arise, such as when a family relinquishes responsibility for the care of their child at 9pm at night; or when an elderly parent caring for an adult family member with disability is hospitalised and the person with disability cannot be left alone. While some people with disability will already be a participant of the NDIS, others will not but will still need assistance immediately.
Under state and territory-funded disability systems, arrangements exist for organisations to respond when emergencies arise at any time. While there is capacity for emergency short term accommodation under the NDIS, there is no national 24/7 response system in place and accessing funded support is limited to people with an NDIS plan. The NDIA has extended its operating hours, however it is closed between 11pm-8am Monday to Friday, weekends and public holidays. Referring people to Lifeline outside these times is inadequate, particularly in response to a significant emergency or crisis.
The NDIA has revised the support coordination role which now involves an expectation that providers are available 24/7 to respond to a crisis, however not every participant has this support funded in their plan.
What NDS is seeking
An emergency response service to be established by the NDIA during the transition period that:
provides emergency support for people living in NDIS sites regardless of whether or not they are a participant;
can be escalated to a regional response if required (i.e. regional service providers are identified that can coordinate 24/7 emergency support); and
is tested and refined for full implementation.
Appropriate supports are available immediately, with arrangements for plan reviews or NDIS eligibility to be prioritised by the Agency on the next business day after the emergency response has been implemented.
Status
The NDIA Contact Centre (1800 800 110) has extended its operating hours to 8am - 11pm local times, Monday to Friday.
NDS has prepared an emergency and crisis response system paper to inform the NDIA’s thinking. An important consideration is whose responsibility it is when a person presents who is not currently in the service system and is not necessarily eligible for supports.
In its submission to the Independent Review of the NDIS 2013 Act, NDS recommended:
the NDIA establish an emergency response function as the NDIS begins full implementation from July 2016
the Act should provide for an emergency response for a person with disability prior to their eligibility as a participant being determined.
NDS sought feedback from providers delivering support coordination to identify implications of the NDIA expectation that they should be available 24/7 to respond to a crisis.
NDS has gathered examples of circumstances requiring an emergency response within trial sites to inform our negotiation with the NDIA.
NDS highlighted the lack of a central coordinated emergency response with the NDIA in May 2015.
Issue
NDIA Portal
The Department of Human Services developed a new ICT system, to be phased in over three years, with the foundations operational on 1 July 2016. Sitting alongside the participant and provider portals will be an e-market, an electronic marketplace where providers and participants can interact. $143M over four years has been committed for the system.
Well over a thousand providers are experiencing delays with their registration application to provide supports under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Most of these are new registrations (i.e. they are from providers not yet working within the NDIS), with a smaller group trying to extend their existing registration to provide new supports.The delay in resolving the registration backlog is concerning, not least because thousands of registrations are expected as the transition to the NDIS continues across Australia.
Providers are experiencing difficulties arising from the slowness of the portal and regularly getting error messages which often requires logging onto the website again and entering the data again. Adding to providers’ frustration is the inability to get a response or a resolution from the provider support telephone or email contacts.
Providers are also reporting a range of issues around plan errors which requires additional administration for providers and in some cases no certainty of funding. Providers only become aware of these errors either when they are informed of a plan review (often with a different funding amount), or when they receive an error report following a payment request.
The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) has an expectation that providers will continue to deliver supports until the plan (funding) or portal is resolved, which means providers are carrying a debt until the NDIA resolve the issue, and in some cases there is no guarantee the plan (funding) will be adjusted. This issue arises when:
plan dates and/or funding amount on the portal does not match the plan posted to the participant;
A new and streamlined registration process is urgently required.
An alert function to help providers track when a plan has been reviewed.
A reporting function for providers to identify participant plan review dates.
Prices to be auto-populated to reduce data input time and minimise errors.
Review of the remittance advice format to allow for easier reconciliation.
Clarity on the scope and functions of the government e-market.
Status
The NDIA are working with each state/territory government to provide lists of pre-approved providers with the relevant list of supports which aims to speed up the registration process.
The NDIA staff who are responsible for registration are undergoing additional training with the expectation that it will hasten decision-making.
The NDIA acknowledge the staff responding to 1800 number are not skilled up on portal queries and are establishing a specialist provider support group with access to the Client Relationship Management (CRM) system.
The NDIA weekly payment summary report on the information, publications and reports page summarises the NDIA total payment amount to participants and providers, and identifies the three main reasons for unsuccessful payments and information to troubleshoot these issues.
The new NDIS portal, ‘myplace’, was implemented nationally from 1 July 2016. NDS are continuing to push for improved functionality to improve providers’ experience.
NDS news update highlights continued portal problems since the launch.
