Mrs Angela Mucic1, Mr Nicholas Cummins1, Courtney Shaw1
1Neurorehab Allied Health Network, Deer Park, Australia
Biography:
Angela Mucic is an accomplished Allied Health Leadership Expert with over 20 years of experience across health and disability organizations. Holding an MBA and a registered physiotherapist, her work focuses on leadership development, workforce optimization, and fostering collaboration across allied health disciplines. Angela has worked with hospitals, clinics, and academic institutions, implementing innovative strategies to improve operational efficiency and client outcomes. A regular speaker, she is dedicated to advancing the profession and shaping the future of allied health leadership through education.
Angela is the Chief Allied Health Officer at NeuroRehab Allied Health Network and Board Director at MiLife Victoria.
Abstract:
Shared risk planning is term often used in the finance sector but has a place in the disability sector. In the finance world, it refers to a mechanism that allows allocation of a portion of a provider’s risk to other stakeholders. This can be applied to the disability sector, where it is appropriate to inform the client about risks and consequences. But in the disability sector is has a much more significant upside in promoting person centred care, upholding the idiom “nothing about us without us”.
Traditionally, risks are assessed when a client is referred to a disability or health service. An administrator collects information about risks such as home and community environment risks, mental health and behavioural risks, family and court orders, and health risks such as seizure and hypoglycaemic risks. Risk assessment is often done with a significant power differential where an administrator makes decisions about how to treat these risks, without collaboration from the client. At NeuroRehab Allied Health Network we have flipped this, ensuring clients are part of their risk assessments and planning, allowing them to participate in decisions around risk tolerance and mitigation.
Moving risk assessment and risk planning from a non-billable admissions task, to a therapist collaborating with the client has further upsides – it is now a billable activity, and it builds capacity in the client’s ability to self-advocate. A third benefit is that the treating therapist rather than administrator leads the risk assessment with the client, enhancing their safety.