Julie McStay

Julie is a Partner in the Aged Care and Retirement Living team at Thomson Geer. She leads the firm’s Brisbane Health & Aged Care team. The team is a unique combination of 12 lawyers and clinical consultants. Julie’s team forms part of the larger national Health & Aged Care team working across Australia.

Julie specialises in providing regulatory compliance advice to residential aged care providers, home care providers, health care providers and disability service providers. Julie is acknowledged as a leading provider of legal services to these industries. She provides advice in relation to all aspects of non-compliance including sanction and accreditation decisions, coroner’s matters, major incident investigations and workplace health and safety investigations.

She advises a large range of aged care providers and retirement living operators including publicly listed groups, private groups and not-for-profits. She is a trusted advisor to some of the largest aged care providers in the country and is retained for many providers in the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety.

In addition, Julie is a Director of Simply Legal Pty Ltd, an organisation that offers access online to high-quality document templates for aged care providers and retirement village operators.

Julie has a Masters of Law with a major in health law. She is also a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Relevant Experience:

Compliance

• Acting for aged care providers in relation to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety.
• Acting for aged care providers in the review of administrative decisions including revocation of accreditation of an aged care service and the imposition of sanctions on an approved provider in respect of a residential aged care facility.
• Advising aged care providers on approvals, transfer of places and managing provisionally allocated places.
• Providing advice to aged care providers and retirement village operators on a multitude of regulatory compliance issues including security of tenure, substitute decision making, financial arrangements and prudential compliance.
• Preparing public information documents and residence contracts for retirement village operators.
• Developing and implementing training packages for aged care providers and retirement village operators in workplace health and safety, medication management, substitute decision-making, end of life decisions and managing major clinical incidents. Thomson Geer provides training services to clients directly. We are also engaged by the Leading Age Services Training Institute to provide a suite of training programs, which are delivered throughout the year.

Corporate Advisory

• Advising aged care providers on aged care governance and the role of risk management and corrective action.
• Advising various aged care providers on prudential bond management issues and associated restructuring.

Acquisition, Disposal, Development and Structuring

• Advised a listed aged care provider on the acquisition of four aged care facilities in New South Wales and Queensland.
• Acting in various acquisitions and disposals of aged care providers, aged care services and retirement villages both as share and asset sales, including review and negotiation of contracts, conducting legal due diligence, advising on regulatory issues including the transfer of aged care places.
• Providing complex regulatory compliance advice to aged care providers and retirement village operators in the development of innovative seniors living models.