AHA was engage to support the development of a national service delivery framework for Australian Government-funded hearing services.

The Office of Hearing Services engaged AHA to develop a Service Delivery Framework for the Hearing Services Program Voucher Scheme. While the framework focusses on the voucher scheme, it is equally applicable to services delivered to all clients, regardless of the source of funding.

The project was conducted over several stages, including a preliminary analysis of current obligations, a literature review and environmental scan, and broad consultation with key stakeholders, including professional bodies, peak bodies, services providers, individual clients and their families, and hearing practitioners.

The Service Delivery Framework is based on principles of continuous quality improvement. The shift away from prescriptive requirements allows service providers to develop their own processes and systems to focus on client and service outcomes.

The Service Delivery Framework provides a range of potential benefits for:

Hearing service providers:

• Setting a clear and consistent framework for the delivery of hearing services
• Reducing the reporting and compliance burden
• Less prescription about process and a greater focus on client and service outcomes
• Positioning the hearing sector to enter a more contestable market in the future delivering hearing services as NDIS registered providers, while retaining client confidence and trust
• Encouraging continuous quality improvement.

Clients and their families:

• Greater consistency in the quality of services available, irrespective of who delivers those services, or where
• Focus on client outcomes
• Protects quality of hearing services, as the market becomes more open to competition for NDIS clients.

The Office of Hearing Services:

• Consistent with the Government’s agenda of ‘cutting red tape’ by identifying opportunities to streamline the current obligations for service providers within a Service Delivery Framework (including removing existing obsolete or redundant requirements)
• Sets clear expectations for the delivery of hearing services
• Aligns with the direction of a proposed National Quality and Safeguard Framework for the NDIS, without duplication.
• Rebalances the role of the Office as the administrator of the Program, rather than setting matters of clinical judgement.