Internal Audit
Independent Internal Auditing Services
In short; yes. The standard Quality Management under the NDIS Q&SS says: The provider’s quality management system has a documented program of internal audits relevant (proportionate) to the size and scale of the provider and the scope and complexity of supports delivered.
Mid-cycle. For example, If you receive your registration on 1/1/2022, then your mid-term audit will be 18 months from the date your receive your registration. So if you have an audit about 9 months from the date of your registration this will give you 9 months to make the quality improvements.
Many people leave it until the last minute. And that will create a great deal of stress for you, and reduce the success of minimising your non conformities and maximising your safety, quality, efficiency, risk and service effectiveness. Don’t have an internal audit just to be compliant. Have an internal audit because you want your participants and staff to be safe and well.
- When you outsource your auditing, you will not be dealing with the bias that can come when internal staff conduct the audits. Add to that, that your internal staff only know what they know. An independent internal auditor should have loads of experience!
- Saving time. If you or your staff are organising the audit, reporting the audits, writing up a continuous quality improvement action list, the odds are the cost of those extra duties will amount to a higher financial cost than the cost of an independent auditor.
- You will have a compliance snapshot of your organisation. With plenty of time to implement the remediations necessary. Better to have nonconformities at an internal audit than at commission audit where they are recorded.
- Total piece of mind. This is the phrase we hare frequently from our internal audit clients. They feel supported, and no longer overwhelmed.
- Having the internal audit itself, represents an entire standard. The internal audit report produced a Continuous Quality Improvement action plan (yay), and all areas of your registration will be gently scrutinised. It is a friendly and supportive service. We are only there to support you.
Absolutely not. It is informal. The only record of the findings will be in your hands. We don’t send it to anyone. And the reason we are there is to find the gaps and point them out to you. So, no need to go cleaning up files, policies, or anything else.
If the NDIS Commission auditor carrying out your next formal audit, is doing their job properly they will give you a major nonconformity for not having an internal audit outcome to show them. That will have a domino effect on other areas also such as: risk, complaints, incidents, information, human resource, continuity of care, emergency management and many more.
About 1 day of your time, mostly face to face over Zoom. We do the summary report when the audits are completed. We will take a couple of hours prior to the audit day, to look at your policies and forms. What we can’t find, we will ask you about on the day.
After the audit, the results will be written up for you, which takes a couple of hours. All up it usually takes about 2 days. However, if you have a large organisation this time estimate will change.
Yes. As we are not conducting an audit on behalf of the NDIS Commission, we are not bound by a ‘non consulting’ rule. This means we can give you advice during the audit which I know many of our client’s find so helpful
A minimum of 5 years commercial auditing or assessing for NDIS Commission. You shouldn’t accept any auditor with out experience past or present, auditing on behalf of the NDIS Commission, Aged Care Commission or another Australian Regulatory Body.
