The Senate has voted to demand the Albanese Government abolish its Integrated Assessment Tool (IAT), the algorithm used to determine funding and priority for older Australians seeking in-home aged care, in the latest parliamentary blow to Labor’s aged care reforms.
The motion, brought by the Greens, was agreed to on Tuesday afternoon without a vote being recorded, after the Coalition and crossbench had already backed a Greens motion to suspend standing orders so the matter could be debated. It calls on the government to abolish the IAT, replace it with a system designed with clinical experts, put the rights of older people first, and restore human override so clinicians can again intervene in assessment outcomes.
The vote follows Monday night’s Four Corners investigation, “The Waiting Game”, which examined the IAT’s “classification algorithm” in detail. According to the program, applicants are scored across three areas, functional ability, unmet need and “compounding factors” such as frailty and cognitive decline, before being sorted into one of eight funding levels. Health services researcher Professor Kathy Eagar, who reverse-engineered the algorithm, told the program the compounding factors are weighted so late in the process that they barely affect the final result. She also noted that although each assessment includes more than 500 questions, including over 100 free-text fields for clinical notes, the algorithm reads only a fraction of them. Professor Eagar said the tool should be scrapped rather than fixed.
The same Four Corners investigation reported that the true number of people waiting for full in-home aged care funding stands at almost 154,000, not the roughly 100,000 officially reported, after the government changed its method of counting the waitlist. Aged Care Minister Sam Rae, interviewed on the program, maintained the waitlist “has always been calculated the way it currently is”, a claim the program disputed.
It is the latest in a run of parliamentary setbacks for the government’s aged care system. Parliament has previously forced the release of 20,000 additional home care packages, pushed Labor to back down on some co-payments, and prompted a rapid review of the algorithm. Last month the Senate, with Greens and crossbench support, passed a bill to restore human override to the IAT, though the government subsequently voted it down in the lower house.
Greens Older People spokesperson Senator Penny Allman-Payne said the tool was “systematically under-assessing need and priority”, leaving people with degenerative conditions without the funding they need.
“The writing is on the wall for Labor’s aged care assessment tool,” she said. “It’s a friendless system that older people, carers and experts have been screaming about for months… Now the parliament has been crystal clear: it’s time for Labor to go back to the drawing board on aged care assessments. Older people deserve a tested assessment system designed by experts that has their rights at its core.”
The full text of the Senate motion notes that the IAT is “untested, structurally flawed and systematically under-assessing the care needs of older Australians, especially those living with mental health conditions, cognitive issues and frailty”, and calls on the government to take immediate action to abolish it.
The Senate vote does not compel the government to act, but adds to mounting political pressure following the Four Corners investigation, which was reported by the program’s journalist Anne Connolly, whose earlier reporting helped trigger the aged care Royal Commission.
There’s not nursing homes for our aged . Isn’t it better to keep them happy in there own homes with more home help ,Restore there dignity instead of throwing them on the trash heap
It looks obvious that the systems being put in place both for aged care and NDIS do not have any personal effect on those making decisions or any of their loved ones. I’m not saying this to be facetious but their understanding of reality for those affected seems to be totally alien to them both in putting systems in place and in their responses when questioned.
I resigned from my job 3 years ago to look after my Mum, when I realised that the home care package level 2 she was on would only give her 3-5 hours of care per week, she has mobility issues and dementia.
I had her reassessment done almost immediately and she was approved for a level 3 but it took 13 months to actually come into play.
It then gave her about 6 hours of care per week, which we used for weekly physio amd exercise physiology, monthly remedial massage and podiatry. We focus on the things that will help with her mobility and keep her on her feet.
Plus 4 hours of social contact per month so that she could have company that wasn’t me, and to enable me to have some time each month to go to my own appointments etc.
She also received meals on wheels 5 times a week, I cooked for her on the weekend.
2 hours of cleaning fortnightly and 1 hour of gardening per month rounded that out.
I do all of Mums transport, daily showers and interim cleaning etcs.
Then SAH came in, with the change in pricing we had to reduce the physio and exercise to fortnightly, meals on wheels to 3 times a week, and we now pay in full for podiatry at Mums GP, so quite a reduction. I had thought of getting her reassessed to make up the hours missing but started hearing the horror stories so made the decision to leave it as it is.
I’m in my late 50’s and I fear what my future may look like, if it’s this hard to get care now with the aging population it will be even worse when I get to the point of needing care. I also won’t have a me to step in as I have no children.
They also need to look at the minimum age for aged care. My brother is in late stages of Lewy body dementia but because he is 64 he isn’t eligible for residential care. They would rather he be placed in an SDA where he would be vulnerable to the others living there. It’s a disgrace. My older sister passed at 64 from alzheimers and her husband had to jump through hoops to finally get her into aged care due to her condition. She was in nsw. I believe it needs to be assessed on a case by case system.
I have been trying to get a reassessment for my mum because they only allocated 60% funding instead of the full amount. What are the government doing with the other 40%? It doesn’t even fund mum for the care she needs for 2 months.
My partner is scheduled for an assessment in 2weeks using this IAT…will we be able to appeal if we disagree given the immense failure rate exposed usung this IAT
I watched Four Corners the other night and was disgusted that elderly partners were doing so much heavy lifting, that I couldn’t help but ask about their injuries and life span. This debacle only adds to the cost of aged care and longer waiting times. It’s a vicious circle. There needs to be better policies, compassion and accountability for our elderly, however, the conspiracy theorist in me says that the government has factored less support into the elderly because there’s so much demand for health, NDIS, mental health etc, that because we’re at the ‘end stages’ of our lives, the quicker we die the less funding we need. I know it’s controversial, but I can’t help thinking that……..
Elder abuse is becoming systematic from old people not having the skills ability or access to online systems and being told to get online and follow the prompts. At 70 years old unfortunate that I have some online skills but I really am a minority in my age group. And still I struggle and the stress of having to try to do these things without not really knowing what’s going on and no face-to-face human contact is terrible.
I was refused an increase that my Care Partner supported – the assessor walked in to our home and said, before we even began the assessment – ‘You will not be successful, the algorithm will knock you out- it is doing it to nearly everyone’ – she was correct – it is a national disgrace –
A long way to go as yet for aged care and NDIS reform. However this Senate bill may crack open the despairing debate over the last decades and parliamentary scrutiny seem to be becoming less brokered by private companies. 👍