Eight years after Anne Connolly’s Four Corners investigation helped expose serious failures in residential aged care and contributed to the establishment of a Royal Commission, the investigative journalist is turning her attention to the next chapter of aged care reform.
Next Monday night, Four Corners will air The Waiting Game, examining the Government’s new aged care system and, in particular, the controversial algorithm used to determine how much funding an older person receives.
The program’s preview promises an investigation into concerns from families, assessors, clinicians and aged care experts who believe the system is failing, with the ABC warning that the policy designed to fix aged care could ultimately cost both older Australians and taxpayers.
For the aged care sector, there is an added reason to pay attention. Connolly knows the territory, and her last major investigation demonstrated just how dramatically a Four Corners program can change the political conversation.
When Connolly began investigating residential aged care, she initially questioned whether the problems she was seeing were isolated or evidence of a broader systemic failure. A crowdsourced investigation generated more than 4,000 responses from aged care workers and family members, with the consistency of those accounts convincing her that the problems were widespread.
The resulting two-part Who Cares? investigation, which aired in September 2018, confronted Australians with footage and accounts of abuse, neglect and poor care inside residential facilities.
Then came the political bombshell.
Just 24 hours before the program aired, then prime minister Scott Morrison announced a Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. While the Government maintained the timing was coincidental, Connolly told me in 2021 that there was “absolutely no doubt” the investigation had prompted the announcement, given the detailed questions the ABC had already put to ministers and regulators.
Whatever the Government’s motivation, the investigation changed the national conversation about aged care.
The subject of The Waiting Game is very different, but the fundamental question is familiar: does the system actually deliver the care older Australians need?
The Government’s Support at Home reforms were designed to give older people greater choice and control while helping them remain at home for longer. At the centre of the system is an assessment process that determines an individual’s care needs and the level of government funding they receive.
It is the role of the algorithm in that process that has attracted increasing scrutiny.
According to the Four Corners preview, Connolly will examine claims that the algorithm can produce funding outcomes that do not accurately reflect an older person’s circumstances, alongside the experiences of families struggling to obtain the support they need.
That makes this more than a story about technology. If an algorithm produces an inadequate assessment, the consequences can be felt directly by an older person who relies on government funding to receive care at home.
The Government can argue that a standardised system is necessary to ensure consistency and make the best use of limited public resources. The more difficult question is what happens when the system’s assessment does not match the judgement of the clinician or assessor sitting in front of the older person.
The timing of the investigation is particularly interesting because The Waiting Game is not exposing a system that everyone agrees is broken. It is examining a reform program that the Government has presented as a fundamental part of fixing aged care.
That makes the political stakes considerably higher.
When I interviewed Connolly in 2021, she was cautiously hopeful about the Government’s response to the Royal Commission but concerned that governments could accept recommendations in principle while ultimately shaping reforms around their own priorities. She also argued that the sector needed to be more honest about its failures rather than allowing poor-performing providers to damage the reputation of everyone working in aged care.
Five years later, she is back examining another major reform.
This time, there are no allegations of what happened behind the doors of a nursing home at the centre of the story. Instead, the question is whether the machinery designed to deliver better care is actually delivering it.
That could make for uncomfortable viewing for the Government’s communications team, particularly given what happened the last time Connolly investigated aged care.
In 2021, Connolly told me she was watching the reforms closely and wanted to give them a chance.
“We’ve got to give [new aged care reforms] a chance,” she said. “It couldn’t be any worse. Let’s put it that way.”
On Monday night, Australians will get another opportunity to see how that chance is playing out.
