The assessment process

Application submission

To submit a digital Governing Body Determination assessment form, you need to:

• complete all the required fields
• upload all the supporting documents.

Before you submit the form, check that:

• your responses are clear and detailed enough to explain your organisation’s governance arrangements
• your supporting documents are relevant and back up your responses
• you know what application fees you need to pay and are ready to pay them.

This will help you avoid sending an invalid or incomplete application, which can cause delays. If you don’t meet all these criteria, we don’t have to make a decision on your application.

You can track your application’s progress in the Government Provider Management System (GPMS). Your governing person will review and approve the determination request digitally through GPMS.

You can find more information about using the digital form and getting technical support on the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing website.   

If you have questions about the content of the form, email us at GoverningBodyApplications@agedcarequality.gov.au.

Assessment

When we make a determination, we assess the following, as listed in section 159(4) of the new Aged Care Act:

• the number of funded aged care services where you provide aged care
• the number of older people you deliver those services to
• the location of those services
• the annual turnover of your responsible persons (how many responsible persons leave your organisation and are replaced each year)
• the membership of your governing body
• any arrangements you’ve made, or will make, to help: 
  • the members of your governing body act objectively and independently in the best interests of your organisation
  • your governing body get advice from a person with experience providing clinical care, when they need to
• any other requirements that apply under Australian, state or territory law
• matters prescribed by the Rules, which includes:
  • your history of compliance with governance conditions
  • if you have a history of non-compliance with the governance conditions, the circumstances of that history and the steps you have taken to become compliant
  • any other matters we think are relevant.

To help us decide if a determination would put the people in your care at risk, we will also talk with other areas of the Commission to understand:

• your compliance with the strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards (clinical care, decision making and governance)
• your compliance with the Financial and Prudential Standards, if you need to comply as a condition of your registration
• complaints made to the Commission about your services
• your compliance history, including recent non-compliance
• if reports made under the Serious Incident and Risk Scheme have identified areas of concern
• other indicators of provider risk.

Our assessment will be based on the information you have provided, and information we hold in our records. We’ll assess this information against the matters set out in section 159 of the new Aged Care Act. If we need more information, we’ll explain why and how you should provide it.

We’ll stay in contact with you during the assessment process by email or phone.

Decision

When we’ve made a decision, we’ll email you the outcome and update the GPMS.

If we approve your application the email will say:

• the date we made the decision
• the governance condition the determination relates to
• the length of time the determination lasts.

If we don’t approve your application the email will say: 

• what our decision is
• why we made that decision
• how you can apply for us to reconsider the decision
• what the reconsideration process is.