Nick Heywood-Smith completed his Bachelor of Applied Science in Physiotherapy from the University of South Australia in November 1998

at the age of 21. Since completing his degree he has worked in a variety of health care settings around the world including five different countries. His work overseas has included working for the National Health Service (NHS) throughout Great Britain in both inpatient and outpatient settings; owning and operating a private massage and rehabilitation business in Kitzbuhel, Austria over two winter ski seasons; consultancy physiotherapy work in public and private facilities in Vancouver and Banff, Canada, and private physiotherapy services provided to Ed Homer, a double below knee amputee, during a summit attempt of Mt Everest in 2001 in Tibet. Following five years overseas, Nick and his wife Nikki started Wellness & Lifestyles Australia from the 2nd bedroom of a unit they were living in in Glenelg North. It began with a single physiotherapist (Nick) providing mobile allied health services to aged care facilities and a part-time marketing consultant (Nikki). It has now grown to a company with over 160 therapists and staff with the full scope of allied health services including physiotherapy, podiatry, speech pathology, occupational therapy, dietetics, and educational training. W&L is a market leader in the provision of mobile allied health services to facilities in throughout Australia and service over 13,000 aged care beds. Its current clients consist of aged care facilities, the intellectually and physically disabled, community health services, day therapy centres, home care package providers, public and regional hospitals and private clients in their homes. It is W&Ls vision to become the benchmark for aged care therapy services and education in Australia, supplying best in class services that surpass need. W&L is an accredited provider of allied health services to the Southern Adelaide Health Service, the Transition Care Program and Disability SA. They have been finalists in the Telstra Business Awards in 2008 and 2009, in InBusiness Magazines Fast Movers for 2007, 2008 and 2009 and recently achieved the BRWs Fastest 100 list for 2009. Nick was also awarded the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur Of The Year in the Young category for the central region, Australia. Nick sits on the Young Variety Group (Variety Childrens Charity) as a committee member and is passionate about helping people thru healthcare and education. Nicks interests include water and mountain sports, travel and his daughters Mia, Indie and Sage.

If your aged care dietitian is not providing services in this way, then contact W&L to make a booking on 8331 3000.

How Nick HeywoodSmith is helping the Aged Care Industry in Australia (Hot Tip 2)
Your Dietitian should be able to improve wound care, reduce supplement usage, and perform site menu assessments for less than $1000!

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7. Most aged care facilities are paying a couple of thousand dollars for their site menu assessment, have residents that are unnecessarily on supplements, and have difficulty accessing aged care specific dieticians. To significantly improve your residents health and outcomes using nutrition and dietary interventions while assisting with your accreditation requirements, you need your dietitian to: 1. Be mobile and come to you (even in rural areas). 2. Have aged care experience and understand your resident an accreditation needs. 3. Be timely and have the capacity to provide you with

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emergency visits to you residents. Be user friendly and recommend a review date then remind you so that you comply with accreditation. Be comprehensive and have a documentation system that is designed specifically for aged care and maximising your ACFI. Be cost effective and track your dietetics usage and resident reviews, then recommend ways to reduce costs. Be holistic and provide your residents with an interlinked service with speech pathology to manage swallowing and nutrition issues. Provide education through online and offline training to educate your care staff.

Did you know that dietitians can be used for:

Individual resident consultations (initial assessments and interventions, ongoing reviews). Malnutrition screening: W&L can help ensure that you organisation has a process in place to screen for malnutrition and also provide data for quality management activities

If your aged care dietitian is not providing services in this way, then contact W&L to make a booking on 8331 3000.

Review of Kitchen nutrition procedures Provision of practical ideas for snacks and food fortification Updating the ideal weight range for all residents Weight trend audit Regular reports can be provided based on findings and recommendations for your use in quality management activities Menu assessment & Nutritional Management reports (in relation to accreditation standards 2.1, 2.10 & 4.8).

How Nick HeywoodSmith is helping the Aged Care Industry in Australia (Hot Tip 3)
If you are not using Occupational therapists to work in collaboration with your Physio and ACFI team at your facility, then you are crazy!

does not have the time. If you really analyse the ACFI, you will learn that Occupational Therapists are actually better suited to the ACFI than Physiotherapists! They can perform assessments in mobility, personal hygiene and toileting, they are trained to conduct PAS and Cornell assessments and they can conduct pain management treatments as well! Wow! So what arent you using them? If you use an OT, you need to make sure that they are specifically aged care trained in the completion of ADL, mobility and cognitive assessments to reduce the workload of your nursing staff, enabling faster care plan reviews and ACFI submissions. Their documentation system also needs to be specifically designed to support accreditation and reduce validation risk and they MUST work in collaboration with your physiotherapistand ACFI team. Did you know that OTs can also:

Many aged care facilities have difficulty finding the time to complete ADL and cognitive assessments and are unable to provide all residents that need it with pain management interventions because their physio

Conduct seating, wheelchair, smoking and bed-stick risk assessments Conduct Activities of Daily Living (ADL) functional assessments (e.g. for the use of modified cutlery, showering, toileting etc.)

If your aged care dietitian is not providing services in this way, then contact W&L to make a booking on 8331 3000.

Devise therapy care plans for the management of pain, mobility, balance, swelling, skin integrity, etc.

ACFI Nurses and Consultants are vital in this process and are often the best second set of eyes over your ACFIs before submission. There are many out there but it is important to choose one that is: 1. Risk Free. If they dont find you any money, there should be no charge. 2. Realistic. They MUST physically visit every resident and be clinically trained so you know that your projections are based on facts. 3. Informative. They must provide advice on how to improve your systems by providing formal education sessions to get that all important buy-in from all levels of staff in your facility. 4. User Friendly. You should be able to customise the services from an ACFI Consultant and only use what you need (e.g. ACFI RNs, Education, Validation Audit services or Complete Audits). 5. Comprehensive. They must develop individual reports for each resident that tell you not just what to claim, but how to get there.

How Nick HeywoodSmith is helping the Aged Care Industry in Australia (Hot Tip 4)
Your ACFI nurses or consultants should be able to identify significant increases in funding and provide a cost analysis of the resources required to achieve it! Many aged care facilities have difficulty identify residents whose funding does not match their care needs. Some residents at aged care facilities are not even receiving the interventions that are clinically indicated. Either this, or the residents are receiving the interventions but the site is not receiving remuneration for their costs. With the ACFI accounting for approximately 70% of your total funding at your aged care facility, you need to have a dedicated team who focus on this complex tool AT ALL TIMES!

If your aged care dietitian is not providing services in this way, then contact W&L to make a booking on 8331 3000.