Greenhills Community Services: a scorecard that no longer points at the strategy

Diagnosis: the framework describes the old business model, not the new strategy.

1. No causal architecture. There is no strategy map and no link between measures, so each site general manager optimises a separate dashboard. Consolidation from nine sites to six requires measures of consolidation savings, client migration and asset disposal; none exist.

2. Wrong mix of measures. 17 of 24 measures are financial or volume based, which is exactly what block funding rewarded. Nothing captures readiness for individualised funding: share of revenue from packages, plan utilisation rates, referral pipeline, self-managed client numbers. Managers will keep chasing occupancy and cost per bed-day while the revenue base erodes.

3. Lag only, no lead indicators. Turnover is a lag measure and the group average of 19% conceals a 41% site. Averaging hides the signal. Lead measures (agency hours as a percentage of care hours, vacancy days, unplanned leave, mandatory training completion) would predict the failure before it appears.

4. Over-aggregation. Client experience at whole-of-organisation level with a 62% response rate cannot direct action at a site or service level. Non-response bias is unexamined, so the measure may be flattering rather than informative.

5. Latency and volume. A 58-page pack delivered five weeks late is a compliance ritual, not a control. It leaves no time to act and buries exceptions. Decision-useful reporting should be two pages of exceptions, with detail on request.

6. Missing perspectives. There is nothing on quality and safety, workforce capability, digital migration or risk appetite. That omission is a governance failure, not just a measurement gap.

Consequence: managers judged on volume and unit cost will resist site consolidation and will shed complex, high-cost clients as funding individualises - rational for the KPI, destructive for the strategy.

Financial - grow a sustainable revenue mix.

• Lag: percentage of revenue from individualised and private-pay funding (target 40% by FY2029).
• Lead: number of active referral sources and plan-manager relationships per region.
• Link: the revenue shift is the strategy; the referral pipeline is what produces it, and it moves months before the revenue line does.

Customer - demonstrable outcomes at site level.

• Lag: proportion of clients meeting their documented goals, plus net promoter score reported by site and service type.
• Lead: percentage of care plans reviewed and signed by a registered nurse within the required cycle.
• Link: compliant, nurse-reviewed plans are the mechanism by which outcomes are achieved; the whistleblower allegation shows this is also the key control.

Internal process - safe, efficient and consolidated.

• Lag: clinical incident rate and cost per client by site, with the six retained sites reported individually.
• Lead: percentage of care plans on the digital platform, agency hours as a percentage of care hours, and occupancy of retained sites.
• Link: digital plans and a stable workforce reduce incidents and cost per client, which releases margin to fund the revenue transition.

Learning and growth - keep and skill the workforce.

• Lag: voluntary turnover by site (never as a group average).
• Lead: vacancy days and mandatory training completion by site.
• Link: turnover at 41% drives agency cost, incident risk and poor client experience; stable, trained staff are the root cause that makes the other three perspectives achievable.

Design discipline: cap the scorecard at about 16 measures, name an executive owner for each, tie each to a funded initiative, and report site-level exceptions to the board with a red/amber trigger that escalates automatically.

The failure was an escalation and coverage failure, not a data shortage. Evidence existed at site level; it had no route to the boardroom.

Committee structure. Split the current Finance and Audit Committee into (a) a Risk and Audit Committee covering financial control, internal audit and enterprise risk, and (b) a Clinical Quality and Safety Committee with a standing agenda of incidents, complaints, restrictive practices and care-plan compliance. Alternatively, amend the existing charter to make clinical quality a permanent agenda item and record it in the charter. Either way, the board must have at least one director with clinical governance expertise, supported by an external clinical adviser.

Delegations and key controls. Document care-plan sign-off as a designated key control with a named owner, frequency and evidence standard. Require quarterly internal audit testing of a sample of plans at each site, with results reported directly to the committee, not filtered through management.

Reporting. Introduce a one-page compliance dashboard with statutory-style thresholds: any site below, say, 95% nurse-reviewed plans appears on the exception page automatically, with a management response and remediation date. Report turnover, incidents and complaints by site, never as a group average.

Speak-up mechanism. Publish a protected disclosure policy with an independent hotline reporting to the committee chair, and require the chair to be told of every substantiated disclosure within five business days, regardless of management's view. Add a control attestation signed by the CEO and Director of Care each half-year.

Why it works: it converts a culture-dependent report into a structural escalation path, and gives the board an independent test of the control rather than management's assurance that it works.