Like baseball’s Moneyball revolution, home care’s next breakthrough may not come from bigger budgets, but from capturing every funding dollar available to work harder for the people it supports.
Support at Home may be Australia’s largest home care program, but Care Connect Chief Executive Officer Lynda Chalmers (pictured top) believes providers risk making a costly
mistake if they treat it as the only funding source available to support older people. Her thinking echoes the central idea behind Moneyball – Michael Lewis’ bestselling book, later
adapted into the 2011 film starring Brad Pitt – in which Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane built a winning baseball team not by spending more money, but by finding overlooked
value. Lynda believes home care providers face a similar challenge.
Instead of asking what a Support at Home budget can buy, she argues providers should begin with a different question: What does the client actually need?
Only then should they work out which funding streams can be combined to deliver it. For Care Connect, a national Not For Profit provider operating across Victoria, New South Wales
and Queensland with over 4,300 clients, that approach is reshaping the way the organisation delivers care – and could point to a broader shift across the sector. “Funding is only an enabler,” Lynda told SATURDAY. “It doesn’t dictate the way that you deliver your services. Let’s look at all different funding as an enabler for us to deliver what we want to do rather than what the Government says is the way that we should do things.”
Find the hidden funding
For many providers, Government-funded home care programs naturally sit at the centre of the conversation. Care Connect is trying to think differently. Rather than asking what can be delivered within a Support at Home budget, the organisation starts with the person’s needs and then works backwards through the available funding options. “Private health insurance, Medicare, hospital funding, philanthropic funding, legal service funding – there’s a whole heap of different buckets that we access to be able to holistically support clients,” Lynda said.
See the different options that Care Connect utilises for its clients below
Support at Home might fund ongoing personal care. Medicare may cover allied health. Hospital funding could support recovery following discharge, while private health insurance or
philanthropic funding might help meet other needs. In many ways, it is a Moneyball approach to home care. Rather than relying on a single funding stream, Care Connect looks for overlooked value wherever it exists, combining multiple funding sources to maximise the care available to each client.
The client experiences one coordinated service. Behind the scenes, however, providers are increasingly stitching together multiple funding streams to make that possible.
That raises a bigger question for the sector. If some providers are able to identify and combine those funding sources while others continue to work largely within a single program, are older Australians receiving the same opportunities regardless of which operator delivers their care?
A broader shift in thinking
The idea extends well beyond home care. Late last year, St Vincent’s Health Australia Chief Executive Officer Chris Blake argued Australia spends too much time debating which funding bucket should pay rather than redesigning services around the person. “The obvious question is whether the top home care package is enough,” he told SATURDAY. “It’s also the wrong one. That’s just one bucket.” See his comments about utilising multiple funding sources at the 2026 LEADERS SUMMIT below.
Real care, he argued, comes from combining multiple funding sources around an individual’s needs rather than treating any single program as the solution. Outgoing Inspector-General of Aged Care Natalie Siegel-Brown also expressed a similar view in her recent National Press Club address. Reflecting on the Royal Commission’s recommendations, she said older people’s needs do not fit neatly into separate funding programs and suggested the long-term goal should be a system where funding follows the person rather than the program. Care Connect believes that future is already beginning to emerge.
Natalie Siegel-Brown
Building a different business
But thinking differently about funding changes the way providers need to operate. Coordinating multiple funding streams requires investment beyond frontline care, including
finance, procurement, compliance and technology. It also demands different workflows. Rather than expecting care managers to navigate every funding rule themselves, Care Connect
has expanded specialist support functions while redesigning processes to free clinicians to spend more time with clients. “For us, it has to be client first,” Lynda said. “We’re just trying to find creative ways to deliver what we know works.
The real opportunity
Support at Home will remain the foundation of Australia’s home care system. But Lynda believes providers that organise their businesses around a single funding program risk
missing opportunities that already exist elsewhere. As health, aged care and community services become more connected, success may depend less on the size of a client’s individual package and more on how effectively providers bring different funding sources together around that person. That is what makes this home care’s Moneyball moment.
The providers that think beyond individual programs may ultimately be the ones that deliver the greatest value for the people they support.
Source: Home care’s Moneyball moment: Rethinking how care is funded | The Weekly Source