This part of the digital form is about material changes. A material change is any change that affects your organisation’s suitability to provide aged care services as an approved provider.
You need to complete each field on the form that relates to the change you need to tell us about.
The form will ask:
- the date the change started
- the reason for the change
- what affect each change has on your suitability.
You need to include enough detail in your answers so we can work out if you have fully considered your obligations. This is particularly important for:
- the reason you give for the change
- the statement you include about how the change affects your suitability.
If you do not provide sufficient detail about the reasons for each change and how they affect suitability, we cannot confirm whether you have fully considered your approved provider obligations or be satisfied that the change has not placed care recipients at risk. This will cause processing delays.
You need to include documentation to support your answers.
What is suitability?
Suitability means the matters that are under section 63J of the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission Act 2018 (Commission Act) which are:
- your organisation’s experience in providing, at any time, aged care or other relevant forms of care
- your demonstrated understanding of your responsibilities as an approved provider
- the systems you have in place to meet your responsibilities as an approved provider
- your organisation’s record of financial management and the methods you use to ensure sound financial management
- your conduct as an approved provider of aged care or other relevant forms of care, and your compliance with:
- your responsibilities as a provider of that care
- your obligations arising from the receipt of any payments from the Commonwealth for providing that care
- whether your organisation has at any time been convicted of an indictable offence
- whether a civil penalty order against your organisation has been made at any time
- any other matters specified in the rules.
The Commissioner may also consider many of these matters in relation to any or all your key personnel and any effect they may have on your suitability. These matters are not limiting in deciding whether you remain suitable to provide aged care.
We encourage all approved providers to regularly check their legal responsibilities. This can help you identify any responsibilities that may be affected by changes your organisation makes. It can also help you work out if any of these changes will affect your suitability to be a provider.
An approved provider’s responsibilities are set out under Chapter 4 of the Aged Care Act.
Update organisation details
Your organisation may change over time. In this section of the digital form tell us about any changes to your organisation. This includes changes already made and may include planned future changes.
Before you start this section of the form, make sure you have all the information you need with you. If you need to save and come back to the form later, make sure you go back to the saved form by clicking edit from the notification workspace. Don’t start a new notification form.
Changes you need to tell us about:
- your organisation’s structure or business model is different to when you were approved
- you have made new changes that are different to what you reported in the past
- your organisation is merging with or being acquired by another company. You need to tell us whether that company is related through a parent company or is a separate organisation
- you’re closing or adding aged care services, or combining services, meaning that you’re expanding or reducing the aged care services you deliver
- you’re changing your corporation type, such as from:
- a trustee to a company
- an incorporated association to a company
- a charitable organisation status to for profit.
Some organisation changes can affect you being an approved provider or your ability to meet your approved provider responsibilities. They can also change your key personnel which you must tell us about.
When we assess the change you’re reporting, we will look at your legal responsibilities in the:
- Aged Care Act
- Commission Act
- Accountability Principles 2014.
The Aged Care Act requires a written statement from you that describes:
- what effect the change has on your suitability to be an approved provider
- what you’re doing to make sure that you’re meeting your responsibilities.
Include as much information as possible to explain what has changed and why. If we can’t work out how the change affects your suitability to be an approved provider because you haven’t provided enough detail, we may ask you for more information. This will delay us updating your information.
You can find more information about your specific responsibilities in our resource Provider responsibilities relating to governance – Guidance for approved providers.
Change to the organisation’s details
Choose this option if you’re changing your:
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organisation’s name – this is a material change but it may not affect your suitability. This will depend on the reasons you made the change.
You will need to give us evidence to support the change of name. You will need to give us a document issued by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) or from a similar state or territory organisation.
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ABN – your Australian Business Number (ABN) is the unique 11-digit number that the Australian Business Register gave you and it must be valid. We enter this number onto your approved provider record to help us to identify your organisation.
It’s possible to change your ABN without affecting your approval, but you need to tell us when this happens. We need documents that verify your new ABN before we change your approved provider record.
Your ABN information must be the one allocated for your company. It can’t be the ABN of another legal entity, even if that entity has the same parent company or is the parent company.
An approved provider that is a corporate trustee must provide the ABN connected with the corporate trustee’s Australian Company Number (ACN).
If you’re changing your ABN, the digital notification form checks the Australian Business Register. If you enter an ABN that doesn’t exist, is invalid or has been cancelled, you will get an error.
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ACN (or updating this) – you will have an ACN if you’re incorporated under the Corporations Act 2001. You get the number from ASIC.
We record your ACN on your approved provider record. It’s a nationally recognised identification number that confirms you’re registered to operate in Australia.
You can’t change your ACN from the ACN you became an approved provider under.
A company is a separate legal entity to a person. For example, a sole trader may have a business but isn’t a company.
Only incorporated organisations can be approved to provide aged care services.
You can’t transfer approval from one corporation to another, even if the corporations are related. For example, you can’t transfer an approval to a parent company.
You should contact us before you make any significant changes to your corporation. You need to be fully informed about how this may affect your approval.
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IAN (or updating this) – incorporated associations are given an Incorporated Association Number (IAN). An incorporated association is a legal entity separate from its members.
The incorporated association structure can work best for small community organisations. They’re generally simpler and more affordable than a company structure.
A change to this number shows that there has been a change to something important in an organisation’s structure. For example, a change in location or the activities you do.
You need to tell us about these changes because some IAN legislation contains certain provisions that can greatly affect your approval and legal ability to operate as an approved provider.
It may be possible to change from an incorporated association to a company (IAN to an ACN). Please contact us if you have any questions.
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ICN (or updating this) – your Indigenous Corporation Number (ICN) must match the organisation’s information listed in the public register of the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations.
If your organisation is registered under the Corporations (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) Act 2006, and you’re an Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisation, check that this is correct. This will show as ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ on the Manage Your Organisation page.
- Trustee or trust information – any changes you make to the trustee must be reported. The ABN and ACN information you provide must be the trustee’s and not the trust’s.
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Contact information – includes your phone number, email address, physical address or postal address. In most cases, this information will be processed and updated on GPMS as quickly as possible.
It might take longer to process these changes if a digital notification form also includes other changes to your organisation, key personnel or third-party arrangements.
Sometimes updated contact information will need to be checked against other records in GPMS. For example, when your phone number, physical address and postal address show you’ve moved from one state to another. We need to understand if this change is a significant organisational change that could affect your suitability.
Change to the organisation’s incorporated structure
If you have changed your incorporation structure, we need to know if the change benefits your delivery of aged care services.
You will need to give us more information if:
- you’ve transferred or sold a majority or controlling interest in your company to an individual or another company
- you’ve sold the whole incorporation to new owners – whether they have aged care experience or not
- your organisation is under voluntary or involuntary external administration or liquidation
- any other incorporation changes not provided for on the form.
Part or full sale of your business
You need to consider the affect the sale of your business has, or will have, on the aged care you deliver and people receiving that care.
A person who buys a partial shareholding or becomes a part owner in the business will be a key personnel. You must make sure they meet the key personnel suitability requirements and then notify the Commission about this. We may ask you to provide information about the things you considered before they became a shareholder or company director.
We may also ask for information about the individuals you are selling your business to if we have concerns about their suitability to be responsible for an approved provider.
Administration or liquidation
If you engage an administrator or liquidator or one is assigned to manage your organisation, you must tell us.
There are approved provider responsibilities that this will directly affect and steps that you need to take.
You must also tell the administrator or liquidator that they are legally responsible for the care and services delivered by your organisation until the administration or liquidation concludes. They must follow all approved provider obligations, including financial reporting, transferring care recipients to another approved provider, or responding to notices from the Commission.
Updating your Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisation or Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation status
If your organisation’s status is set as an Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisation, but this is no longer true, or is incorrect, you can use the digital notification form to change it.
Change to the organisation’s governance
A change to your governance structures may affect your responsibilities and suitability to provide aged care. The provider governance reforms introduced in December 2022 recognise the important role of an approved provider’s governing body.
You need to tell us when there is a change to your:
- executive management structure – if you remove or add executive mangers, you should notify us in the key personnel section of the form
- board or equivalent – this includes when you:
- add or remove board members
- change your board arrangements, for example if the make-up of your governing body changes
- introduce board advisory arrangements with external people or companies, for example a voluntary or involuntary administrator
- clinical governance structure – this includes how you manage clinical oversight and the clinicians responsible for this oversight.
Changes made to your organisation’s governance structure may affect whether you comply with the requirements for:
- governing bodies
- quality care advisory bodies.
If you don’t have a governing body determination, you need to comply with the governing body requirements.
You can find information about these requirements in Provider responsibilities relating to governance - guidance for approved providers.
Change affecting organisation’s financial status
The financial health of a provider is closely related to being able to deliver safe, high-quality care.
In this part of the form, you need to give us an overview of what caused your change of financial status. These causes could include:
- difficulty managing refunds of residential accommodation deposits
- not being able to pay staff to deliver care and services
- a financial set back that meant you had to make decisions about how to operate and the viability of the organisation – for example an intention to stop delivering services in the future.
You need to tell us about a change in your financial status and how it affects the safety and quality of your care.
Other changes
We know that not all approved providers are the same and don’t have the same challenges. You need to recognise any other change in circumstance that you need to notify us about that isn’t included in this guide or on the notification form.
For this reason, it’s important that you’re familiar with the issues that affect provider suitability under s63J of the Commission Act.
