When AN-ACC replaced ACFI in October 2022, every residential aged care provider in the country had to relearn how it was funded. Sundale, a not-for-profit provider in Queensland, had no dedicated funding team and an ageing model to leave behind. It rebuilt its funding capability from the ground up, and made Mirus Metrics the platform that capability now runs on.
Client background
Sundale is a not-for-profit seniors and retirement living, home care and aged care provider that has cared for Queensland communities since 1963. From its support office at Burnside on the Sunshine Coast, Sundale runs seven residential aged care sites across the Sunshine Coast and central Queensland, totalling 357 beds, including dedicated secure units for residents living with dementia. Beth McLean is Sundale's AN-ACC Manager, responsible for funding across every site with the support of a small coordination team. Her remit is broad: daily funding checks and reassessments, clinical auditing and facility health checks, AN-ACC education for nursing teams, and reporting to the executive and board. A registered nurse who moved from the floor into funding, Beth built much of Sundale's AN-ACC capability herself, making her one of the organisation's most influential voices on financial sustainability.
The challenge
In October 2022, residential aged care underwent one of the most significant funding reforms in years, with AN-ACC replacing ACFI. Overnight, every provider in the country had to relearn how its care was funded, and rebuild the internal capability to manage it. For Sundale, the stakes were sharp. The organisation had no dedicated funding team in place and its ACFI performance had slipped. It was rebuilding funding capability from scratch at the same moment the entire sector was learning a new model, with the revenue that underpins care on the line.
Sundale had also initially engaged two different providers to help it navigate the transition to AN-ACC. With a new model to master and a budget to manage, it needed to consolidate around a single partner: one that could give its team the education and support to get AN-ACC right, and keep it right, every day, across seven sites and 357 beds.
The solution
Sundale asked Beth to lead the review. Weighing the education, support and reporting each provider offered, Mirus Metrics came out in front on every measure, and Sundale consolidated on it from day one of AN-ACC. “We found Mirus offered us more and more support than what we were looking for,” Beth says. “Whenever we asked a question, it was instant support.”
What began as a procurement decision quickly became something more fundamental. As Sundale rebuilt its funding function, Mirus Metrics became the platform that function was built on. Beth drew heavily on Mirus's education, attending master classes and Mirus Academy training whenever she could and bringing her team with her, and leaned on responsive support when it mattered. “When something didn't look right to me on Mirus, I'd contact support, and straight away Chris was onto it.” Today, Mirus Metrics is the backbone of how Sundale manages AN-ACC: not a tool the team refers to, but the system its funding runs on.
"Honestly, without this, I don’t know how I could have coped, or how we could have maintained our AN-ACC."
How it fits into their operations
For Beth, Mirus Metrics is not an occasional reference point. It is where the working day happens. She is one of the platform's heaviest users nationally, signed in from 7.30am to 4.00pm and, by her own account, refreshing the dashboard about 100 times a day. When the CEO asks how funding is tracking, she has the answer in seconds. And every funding report that leaves her desk cites Mirus as its source, so the executive and board know exactly where the numbers come from.
That reach runs right through Sundale's operating rhythm. Each Monday, Beth sends her team a weekly insight report drawn from Mirus data, checking that clinical notes and forecasts are current for every resident. Each week, she produces a funding report for executives and site managers, breaking down funding maximised, resident numbers and classifications. Benchmarking, case-mix and subsidy data feed her fortnightly revenue meetings, weekly care-minute reporting, and monthly board and executive reporting. Her team even tracks pending assessments on a shared screen, giving Beth a live view of the pipeline across all sites.
The results
Four years on, the significance is not that Sundale adopted a platform. It is that a critical funding capability, rebuilt during the biggest reform the sector has seen, now runs as a daily discipline with Mirus Metrics at its centre. Funding decisions are made daily, not reconciled monthly. Forecasting, weekly reporting, fortnightly revenue meetings and monthly board and executive reporting all run off the same live data. “The daily funding would be a nightmare,” Beth says. “It's live, changing every day, and I honestly don't know how I'd do it. It's not possible, actually.”
That rhythm also lets Sundale act with confidence and hold its ground. When one resident's funding was held up upstream by Medicare and My Aged Care for three months, Beth could see exactly where the gap was, chase it to resolution, and show her finance and executive teams precisely what was a Mirus issue and what was not. And with further reform coming, including changes to how funding is paid in advance, she is already planning to model the impact through the platform's scenario planning. For Sundale, managing AN-ACC and using Mirus Metrics have become the same thing.
Advice to other providers
Beth's advice to other providers, especially those still finding their feet with AN-ACC, is refreshingly simple. “Just try it, and see what the benefits are,” she says. “Honestly, without this, I don't know how I could have coped, or how we could have maintained our AN-ACC.” For an organisation that rebuilt a critical capability during a period of upheaval, Mirus Metrics did not just support the journey. It became part of how Sundale runs.