In this article, we delve deep into Short Term Accommodation (STA) and how Comm.care supports you with creating appointments, assigning correct staff, documenting service delivery and invoicing it in minutes/seconds.

We created this tutorial to show you how easy it is in Comm.care to claim, saving you time and effort, and allowing you to get back to what you do best - running your business!

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First, what exactly is STA, or Short Term Accommodation?

Short Term Accommodation (STA) a.k.a. respite refers to the support provided for the short term in a house or a rented place. The NDIS Core Supports - Assistance with Daily Life support category funds it.

What does it include?

• Support staff throughout the day for self-care
• Medications and personal care
• Social activities and food
• Overnight and short stays
• Group activities (Group of Supports)

All of this is included in a 24-hour shift which is provided by multiple staff (ratio of staff to participants) at the various time. This are to be claimed under different line items (claiming for Time of Day and Day of Week). Although the prices accurately reflect the support costs, it can be confusing and scary when it comes to claims and staff hours. The service delivery to each participant varies according to their needs and preferences.

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How can Comm.care help you better manage the service delivery?

Comm.care by Pnyx is a collaborative case management system designed around the idea of person-centred care. It helps you to deliver personalised services while keeping the admin work to the minimum so you can focus on what you do best. It helps you and the support workers to quickly and efficiently capture, document and confirm the case notes which will be claimed in bulk through NDIS.

Regardless of how many staff are working during the day for short term accommodation, you will be able to roster them and the providers can easily capture their notes at the point of care to claim through Comm.care.

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Comm.care in action.

Let’s have a look at an example of how Comm.care, a full-featured case management system will translate these various line items into a single invoice, saving you a significant amount of time and effort.

Say, for example, Cathy Flint (a participant) is to be provided with 24/7 care with 4 different staff at different times. In this case, each of your staff will have a different shift with a different time and perhaps different line items. But it is claimed all under a single ‘Quantity’ of STA/Respite appointment. To create these appointments, you will need to have services created with all the line items under My Organisation Services. Check out the tutorial on how to create services for your organisation. You will be able to add additional Assistance with self-care line items under the same service labelled as ‘STA’.

Once you create it for your organisation, you will need to assign that service to the participants you are going to provide as per their service agreement. Check out the tutorial on how to add support services to clients roadmaps.

Once you assign the services, you will need to create 4 appointments with different staff members (attendees) assigned to it and spread out within the 24 hours period.

Create 4 appointments from My Circle’s calendar which separate attendees assigned at different times. Check out this tutorial on how to create appointments.

Comm.care is a dedicated case management system, and yet it provides some HR features like ‘staff availability’ for the organisation to easily manage almost everything. Hence, while creating appointments for the participant (Circle of care), if the assigned attendee is not available, it will give you a pop-up notification of their occupancy.

Once you create appointments for the circle of care with separate attendees, you will be able to see them on the Circle’s calendar, just like this (in the agenda view).

Now, each attendee will be able to see their allocated shift in ‘My Calendar’.

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Where’s the trick?

...here’s the trick. While creating appointments, you will need to enter the Time and Quantity. The time will be the duration of the appointment, but as you know, STA has the unit of measurement as Day and not Hours, you will have a separate field as ‘Quantity/Qty’.

Now, you have created 4 appointments for a single service delivery to be claimed and so you will enter the Quantity as 1 in one appointment and 0 in the rest of the 3 appointments. This way you will still be documenting accurate appointments and progress notes with assigned attendees while charging for a single ‘Quantity’. This will help you to run staff hours effectively as their appointments are separate although you’re claiming for a 24/7 appointment. Comm.care treats Progress notes as an official and final document to be claimed.

Progress notes are pre-populated from the appointments and so the appointments will be pre-populated for the staff with time and Quantity, so all they need to do is document their service delivery details.

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Completing Progress notes at the point of care.

Your staff/users will be able to complete Progress Notes at the point of care with their mobile or tablet. Comm.care is easily accessible with any device, anywhere for all the users so there is no need to get back to the office and document the service delivery. Check out how you can use Comm.care on any device.

Furthermore, it is really important for your staff to document service delivery for you to claim those hours and for them to update their staff hours. Comm.care helps to complete basic documentation requirements stated under the Provider Payment Assurance Program. Check out how to create progress notes with an appointment.

Staff will still have the liberty to document their staff hours with the help of the embedded timer in the progress notes.

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Easy claim process in minutes!

Comm.care’s ‘low-effort and versatile claim process’ saves you a tonne of time by bulk claiming and sending out statements or invoices to NDIS plan managers and participants in minutes. Once your staff completes the progress notes, you are ready to claim for the services provided. Check out how to create a claim/invoice in Comm.care for a single participant.

After you generate the claim, you will notice it appropriately replicates the details from the progress notes. You have one progress note with Qty=1 and the rest 3 as 0. It shows exactly the same, allowing you to claim for single service delivery along with accurately depicting the time spent on service delivery by each staff for their separate appointments, all reflected in one single invoice.

Now it’s your turn...

This is just one of many Comm.care tutorials that we’ve created with you in mind to make your job easier so you can focus on what matters most.

If you're looking for additional help on implementing your NDIS Short Term Accommodation system, reach out to our friendly team today.