Residential aged care services are navigating significant change across clinical practice, quality requirements, workforce development, digital health, and service delivery. Effective change management is essential to successfully introduce and sustain new systems, processes and ways of working.
To support this, North Western Melbourne Primary Health Network (NWMPHN) funds a change management training program for residential aged care homes (RACHs). Delivered by Thrive Aged Care Consultants, the program provides practical support to help aged care teams build confidence in leading and responding to change, with a particular focus on embedding digital health and telehealth into everyday practice.
Participating services receive tailored, on-site training that supports teams to move from policy and ideas to action, strengthen continuous improvement processes, and implement meaningful, sustainable change.
The program is designed for a multidisciplinary team approach involving managers, clinical leaders, quality staff, educators, digital health champions, and other staff involved in service improvement initiatives.
Benefits of effective change management
A structured approach to change management can help aged care services:
- build workforce confidence and capability
- improve communication and stakeholder engagement
- strengthen continuous improvement activities
- effectively manage risks associated with change
- increase uptake of digital health and telehealth solutions
- support sustainable improvements in resident care and service delivery
Change management toolkit
As part of the training program, Thrive has developed a change management toolkit to support RACHs to plan, implement and evaluate change initiatives in a structured and practical way.
The toolkit provides a suite of templates and resources that can be customised to meet the needs of individual services. This helps teams build capability, engage stakeholders, manage risks and embed sustainable improvements.
The resources align with the practical approaches used throughout the training program. However, they can be used independently or alongside other quality improvement and organisational change activities.
Toolkit resources
- Change management plan template (.docx)
- Change management readiness audit (.docx)
- Vision statement template (.docx)
- SWOT analysis template (.docx)
- Stakeholder analysis template (.docx)
- Training needs analysis template (.docx)
- Action plan template (.docx)
- Risk management plan (.docx)
- Communication plan template (.docx)
- Change management evaluation tool (.docx)
Digital health and telehealth resources
These resources have been developed to support residential aged care services implementing digital health and telehealth initiatives. They can assist organisations to:
- assess change readiness
- identify barriers to implementation
- strengthen staff engagement and confidence
- improve adoption of digital health technologies
- support sustainable practice change
Additional resources
- Change management readiness audit tool
- Driving change in residential aged care – pre-workshop activities
Further information
For further information about the change management training, resources or support available to residential aged care services, please contact agedcaresupport@nwmphn.org.au
