The federal health department’s latest aged care demographics report shows 6,436 people left the Support at Home Priority System because they died in 2025-26. That works out to roughly 17 deaths a day among older Australians who had been assessed as needing help at home.
It is a steep rise. The year before, 4,812 older Australians died while on the waitlists under the old Home Care Package system. The new figure is about 34 per cent higher.
A promise under strain
The numbers land awkwardly for a government that has made aged care reform a central commitment. The department says 83,000 additional Home Care Package and Support at Home places were released during 2025-26, yet the number of people active in the priority system grew substantially. It puts this down to ageing, noting that a growing and older population is the main driver of rising demand for home care.
The delays are well documented. Following the Four Corners investigation into the system, it emerged that the median wait from applying to actually receiving approved care had blown out to ten months, and that 98,606 people were waiting simply to be assessed. Aged Care Minister Sam Rae, confronted with the 2024-25 death toll, called it a tragedy while pointing to the government’s efforts to cut wait times.
The human cost has been raised repeatedly. At a Senate inquiry last year, providers estimated that around 10,000 older Australians die every year while waiting for support. The inquiry also heard from families describing waits of more than a year for services that had already been approved.
What the figure does and does not show
The 6,436 should be read with some care. Support at Home replaced the old Home Care Packages program at the start of November 2025, so 2025-26 spans two systems and may not line up neatly with earlier years. The department also notes that the figures may be revised once the 2025-26 data is finalised.
A larger system will also record more deaths. The department puts the mortality rate among everyone active in the priority system at 2.0 per cent, against 6.0 per cent for people actually receiving care, and says the proportion departing the queue due to death has remained relatively stable.
Even so, each of those deaths was a person the government had assessed as needing support, who died before the care they were assessed as needing arrived.
