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Murrumbidgee Aged Care Network

Residential Aged Care providers working together for sustainability

A Care Together Project

Murrumbidgee Aged Care Network

Location

Murrumbidgee region, NSW, covering approximately 125,000 square kilometres from the Snowy Mountains in the east to the northwest plains and along the Victorian border to Wentworth.

What is the market failure being addressed?

Residential aged care facilities provide a vital service in the region, allowing people to be cared for as they age in their local communities. The seven small independent operators involved in this project are also important employers of local staff.  However, most aged care facilities in the region are struggling to cope with the growing administrative burden associated with issues such as recruitment, reporting, IT support, compliance and training. With increasing regulations flowing from the Federal Government review of aged care legislation, there is a related increase in administrative workload on managers and boards, which is unsustainable. These pressures all add up to an increased risk of closure if appropriate solutions cannot be found.

What is the project seeking to achieve?

The overarching aim of the project is to ensure the sustainability of aged care services in the Murrumbidgee region so that local people can continue to age in place. The project is exploring whether a co-operative might assist the existing residential aged care facilities by centralising some of the key administrative functions to achieve economies of scale and free up management time which might be better spent addressing the quality of care. By collaborating on shared services, these smaller, community-based providers can achieve greater efficiencies while still remaining independent and community care focused. A co-op would also allow for like-minded organisations to come together to share ideas on achieving common goals, even where the implementation might look slightly different for each facility.

The project is driven by a steering committee consisting of managers from five of the providers involved.

Murrumbidgee Aged Care Network Co-operative info graphic - Care Together Program

This image shows how forming a co-operative can support community owned and operated Aged Care Providers to focus on delivering quality placed based care to those that need it.

Where the project is at now

The Murrumbidgee Aged Care Network Co-operative (MACN Co-op) has taken significant strides, moving from collaborative concept to registered co-op. Spanning the vast Murrumbidgee region, this community-led initiative now brings together a group of small, independent residential aged care providers determined to remain locally owned and responsive amidst mounting regulatory, financial and workforce pressures.

Recent months have seen key milestones reached: financial modelling and a comprehensive business plan have been completed, governance structures refined, and formal rules were developed ahead of the co-op’s formal registration. A dedicated steering committee guided this process to completion, with managers and board members from across seven local facilities working side by side.

The shared services co-op is designed to centralise critical, non-clinical functions (including compliance support, recruitment, IT, HR and software management) enabling each provider to achieve economies of scale and free up care teams for quality, person-centred care. Early efforts have focused on streamlining back-office operations, reducing costs and pooling resources.

Already, the MACN Co-op is helping providers avoid duplication, secure better deals on essential services and access up-to-date digital systems for compliance and record-keeping. Staff and managers benefit from shared expertise, consistent advice and a growing peer support network that counters isolation and makes space for innovation. Most importantly, the co-op protects the local ownership, identity and independence of member facilities, ensuring that aged care remains a community asset rather than being lost to larger operators with head offices located hundreds of kilometers away.

Looking ahead, the priority is now to progressively roll out shared services to the founding members. Once the model is established and tested, the MACN Co-op will invite other independent providers in the region to join, building a scalable, regionally anchored solution that promises to enable more sustainable care. With a strong foundation and lessons captured from the Care Together Program, the co-op stands as a template for safeguarding place-based aged care not just in Murrumbidgee, but for rural and remote communities across Australia.

Read more about the MACN Co-op formation and registration

Murrumbidgee Aged Care Network in the news

“The co-operative model offers us the potential to share back office services, while retaining our independence, and to explore some innovative approaches to attracting and retaining key staff.”

– Karen Hodgson, Steering committee lead

“Older Australians aging in small regional communities deserve the same high standards of care as those in larger urban communities, so it is vital we find ways to ensure the sustainability of services like ours.”

“By working together, we have the opportunity to address common administrative challenges that have the potential to detract from our ability to provide our residents with the highest quality care.”

Related projects

Care Together is supporting the establishment of new co-operative and mutual enterprises that provide sustainable workforce solutions in areas where current approaches are not working. Explore more Care Together projects. 

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