Plans may be worthless, but planning for the new Aged Care Act is everything: the value of preparing in uncertain times

Wednesday, 30 July 2025

While the rules remain unclear, the imperative is clear: those who wait for certainty will find themselves underprepared for rising costs, reduced margins and workforce strain.

Dwight Eisenhower said, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything”. This is a reminder that things won’t always go to plan, but the planning process is vital to sharpen your readiness for uncertainty and change. The best-prepared providers won’t be the ones who guessed the rules correctly. They’ll be the ones who knew their numbers, pressure-tested assumptions and build playbooks they could activate at speed. Here’s how to make this uncertain window your strategic advantage and make every week of planning count.

Surface your true cost drivers

Start with your current state. How deeply can you drill into the granular drivers of sustainability across each service line? Which client segments deliver healthy margins today, and which bleed cost under marginal‑rate pricing? Map your mix of case‑management hours, clinical visits and ancillary services to current funding—and then stress‑test against the government’s proposed co‑contribution thresholds for non-clinical services. If means‑testing tightens, will your leanest service tiers remain viable?

Identify your action levers

Speed of response will differentiate leaders from laggards when the rules do land, so identify the areas you can act now:

• Staffing flexibility: Can you flex shifts or redeploy care workers between case‑management and clinical roles if utilisation spikes?

• Service‑model pivots: Could you bundle tele‑triage or wellness check‑ins into a premium offering if basic package values shrink?

• Pricing adjustments: Do your systems allow on‑the‑fly fee tweaks within compliance bands?

• Reporting agility: Are your ICT platforms ready to upload care‑plan updates, incident logs and waitlist statistics without bottlenecks?

• Can your balance sheet absorb the cashflow turbulence of a prolonged transition period with rule and price adjustments?

Challenge your core assumptions

Uncertainty can breed inaction. But assuming things will stay the same is the real risk. It is easier to wait for more information and assume things like referral networks, documentation standards or client behaviours will hold steady. For each major assumption—be it stable funding proportions, unaltered referral pathways or consistent client demand. What could a radically different scenario be? What if peak‑demand regions see sudden surges? What if reporting requirements double in complexity? If your intake, assessment and rostering processes can’t bend to those stressors, pinpoint the failure modes now.

Build “Day 1” playbooks

Your plans don’t need to be perfect, but they do need to be ready. Translate insights into executable plans. For each scenario—optimistic (minimal rule changes), base (as‑expected reforms) and pessimistic (tighter means‑testing and heavier reporting)—draft concise decision trees:

• Trigger: e.g. final co‑contribution rate confirmed at X%.

• Response owners: CFO signs off on reforecast; IT lead deploys system patch; operations team communicates fee changes to clients.

• Communication protocol: Templates for staff briefings, referrer advisories and client FAQs.

Playbooks don’t eliminate risk, but they stop you from standing still. Having these playbooks at hand means you won’t scramble for decisions when policy details drop. With a deeper understanding of your business and your action levers, you will be ready to respond to change and uncertainty. Your teams can move quickly from interpretation to implementation.

Fortify resilience beyond reform

Even without policy shifts, providers must prepare for rising costs and workforce pressures:

• Service diversification: Consider piloting restorative‑care trials, social‑connection projects or home‑modification packages to broaden revenue sources.

• Technology adoption: Consider automating routine reporting, appointment scheduling and client engagement to free staff for value‑add care.

• Cross‑training: Consider equipping care workers to handle assessments, clinical tasks and basic wellbeing checks, smoothing peaks in any one function.

Use the disruption and ‘burning platform’ of 1 November as an opportunity to drive innovation or reposition your organisation in the market at pace that would be unachievable in ordinary times.

Make the interim your proving ground

The coming months are not a grace period but a test of operational readiness. By surfacing cost drivers, cataloguing your levers, stress testing assumptions and building ready-to-activate playbooks, you’ll be better placed to navigate what’s ahead, whatever form the final rules take.

When 1 November arrives, success won’t depend on predicting every detail. It will come down to how well you understood your exposure, how quickly you can act, and how prepared your teams are to move with clarity rather than confusion.