AN-ACC and care minutes: turning compliance complexity into funding results

With over 35% of aged care providers operating at a loss and AN-ACC margins continuing to thin, the strategic management of AN-ACC funding and care minute compliance has never been more critical. Many providers are leaving funding they are entitled to on the table due to data complexity, care minutes compliance risk, and perceived fear of increased costs that may come with increased funding. In a margin-thin environment, that is the difference between a deficit and a surplus. As the new act, rules and regulations continue to reshape the sector, navigating AN-ACC funding and care minute compliance simultaneously has proven frustrating for many. AN-ACC and care minute compliance go hand-in-hand, and the complexity of managing both is the challenge providers need to address to capture revenue leakage.

FicusBridge Founder & CEO Dr. Tanvi Dalal strongly advocates that time and resources should be going where they are needed most – to uphold provider staff focusing on resident care. She has demonstrated how streamlined workflows make revenue outcomes and robust compliance confidence possible for any provider. Dalal has delivered the transformation from AN-ACC and care minute headaches to revenue results repeatably for a range of providers using a combination of analytics and advisory. This has resulted in providers and staff getting back to doing what they’re meant to be doing, delivering rights-based and person-centred care.

Naming obstacles 

Navigating AN-ACC funding and care minute compliance, to reach optimal levels, is an increasing concern for many aged care leaders. Far from lack of intent, skill or time, it is the ever-evolving regulatory framework, opaque rules and complicated analytics that have left sincere and hard-working professionals exasperated.

Recognising the environment leadership are tasked to thrive in is a critical first step in meeting the moment. To support a healthy sector, its obstacles must be named.

Calling a spade a spade is vital. Providers are caught in a difficult position – either over-delivering care minutes without claiming the funding they are entitled to or holding back from claiming out of fear of non-compliance, without realising they may already be compliant but simply not reporting accurately.

For hard-working provider leadership this has led to widespread confusion and a critical underclaiming of care funding at exactly the moment when aged care providers can least afford it. The introduction of the care minute supplement has created a significant and largely unspoken crisis across the sector, compounding the challenge of AN-ACC funding management.

Dr Dalal built FicusBridge from the ground up to solve this exact problem – not with another complex reporting layer, no thank you, but as a strategic decision-support platform that gives providers confidence in their data, their compliance, and their claims. Unlike BI tools and manual funding workflows that leave leaders to interpret the data themselves, FicusBridge delivers proactive care minute management, predicting compliance gaps before they happen and providing the clarity that boards and executives need. Dalal had been in the trenches, she couldn’t bring another time-waster to the scene.

Earned insight

Dalal built FicusBridge from having done the time on the ground. Each brick of it was laid with earned success from setbacks overcome. As a former general manager of funding for a leading provider in RAC, she has lived and breathed the tension points of navigating confusion and reduced funding. After leaving the provider, she was approached by multiple standalone and medium-sized organisations to review their funding operations and was shocked to discover the hundreds of thousands of dollars of funding they were leaving on the table – even those paying AN-ACC consultants a monthly retainer. There was clearly a gap in AN-ACC knowledge across the sector.

FicusBridge was born out of earned industry lessons, to be an AN-ACC funding and care minutes platform, built by a funding executive with firsthand insight managing these functions at scale. Dalal knew, not from a glossy magazine or conference pitch but through being at her desk and overcoming, “what is going on here?” She knew that the biggest barrier to funding optimisation wasn’t a data void, it was data deluge and its complexity.

The solutions on offer in the sector have largely overcomplicated AN-ACC and care minute management, this has meant more frustration for leaders that neither deserve it, nor have the time to wrangle though it; Low adoption, poor compliance visibility, missed revenue, the sector cannot do its job this way.

Dalal knew FicusBridge had to go in the opposite direction. From R&D day one, the goal was clear; its software and services were crafted to be fit for purpose, only needing common-sense to implement. The platform, built on live Services Australia data, was created so that people who use it, real care workers not tech-whizzes, could use it every day and enjoy it. Systems must be tailored to the people that use them routinely, Dalal believes. She wanted the real people she had known in care-work to love what FicusBridge offered – if they were happy to engage with the tool consistently, results would follow, so that’s what she built.

A difference

Dalal knew the proof could only ever be in the pudding. And the pudding was served. Seeing provider clients reach clarity and insight over AN-ACC and care minutes, to see that result in the deserved funding increase has been a personal and professional joy for her. During one demo, a care manager said “this might make me like AN-ACC” – the next day, they signed up for FicusBridge. Another funding manager at a large organisation shared that “this one report alone has saved me 3 hours per week of working on spreadsheets.”

Clients have achieved an average of $2 funding increase per resident per day, over $2,500 in additional funding per day, and over a million in annual funding impact within 30 days. For clients, this is seniors’ lives impacted, this is staff skill and commitment honoured through pay. This is a provider and sector where it should be.

She remembers hearing from a funding manager, at a RAC of around 40 facilities, “’if we had something like this last year, we could have recovered $5M more in AN-ACC revenue.’”

Supporting provider leadership and clinical staff, who have worked so hard to sincerely meet compliance regulations, change it around, continues to fuel Dalal. 

Seeing providers partnering with FicusBridge and securing 950% ROI within a month has been more than encouraging. That figure rose to 2,500% ROI within two months for a large provider group with 20 facilities and 2,000 beds – measured as recovered funding against the platform fee. Large or small, FicusBridge can work for all providers to make an impact and deliver measurable financial results.

The FicusBridge difference is clear:

• Before – Manual spreadsheets, fragmented data, and “fingers crossed” compliance
• After – Real-time visibility, automated claiming accuracy, and staff who claim back time with residents.

Substance

Clients have described FicusBridge as something “built by someone who has been in the trenches of AN-ACC.”

Built by someone who has actually done this job, FicusBridge is the only AN-ACC and care minute platform built by an industry-insider, for the industry.

Lived experience is earned, and this means that FicusBridge is built to make sense on the ground, in the halls and in the routine of care. The sector deserves intuitive support for funding teams, built for real workflows out of reality not ‘nice-to-have’ operational dreams. And critically for Dalal, FicusBridge would never display data for inane-data’s sake, data is purposeful and focused on financial outcomes.

Important for Dalal, FicusBridge has become the only solution in the market that carries no ACFI baggage. Many platforms crafted to the old ACFI funding model, now patched and retrofitted with updates to accommodate AN-ACC, result in utter confusion and unreliability.

FicusBridge was crafted for the now – designed from the reality of regulation, specifically for AN-ACC and care minutes; devoid of legacy workarounds, outdated logic and unnecessary complexity from systems of yesteryear.

Dalal has lived the frustration of her colleagues. FicusBridge had to be clean, modern, and purpose-built for the world aged care providers have to face and operate in for success. She saw the executives she respected, her clinical friends, FicusBridge wouldn’t overwhelm users with information and leave them to figure out the next step.

FicusBridge was made so that seeing what action to take, and why, is clear. Backed by expert advisory services ranging from one-off funding uplift reviews to fully outsourced AN-ACC management and care minute monitoring, the FicusBridge platform is always an accessible partner. This is especially beneficial for standalone or medium-sized organisations who struggle with finding specialised funding managers and don’t have sophisticated systems to monitor their revenue and cost. Technology must always give visibility, and through its advisory support, results are immediately delivered.

From headaches to help

Complicated systems should never be holding providers back from the operations and care they are striving for.

For leaders looking to transition from reactive compliance to strategic funding optimisation, the time to audit your data accuracy is now. Book a free 15-minute funding strategy chat.