The Department of Health, Disability, and Aged Care has stepped in to reallocate aged care assessments to organisations with more capacity, following reports 120,000 older Australians are on the waiting list to be assessed.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing told the Weekly SOURCE, "While assessment organisations ordinarily manage reallocations independently, throughout September the Department provided direct administrative support to enable assessors to focus on conducting assessments."
The reallocation of referrals primarily took place in South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland.
Founder and Director
See Me Aged Care Navigators
Coral Wilkinson, Founder and Director of See Me Aged Care Navigators, told The Weekly SOURCE implementation of the Single Assessment System (SAS) in December 2024, meant to 'simplify and improve aged care assessments', has been "anything but". She has observed that new assessment organisations are struggling to keep up, and their referrals are being redirected to established assessment teams.
"The allocation of referrals for aged care assessments is like a lottery, with My Aged Care randomly assigning assessment referrals to State and Territory health departments, or to the new assessment teams.
"Winning the assessment lottery is being allocated to a State or Territory health department.
"Older people who have been assigned to some of the new assessment teams are still waiting to be assessed, 10 months on from implementation date.
"In the past month, outstanding assessment referrals from some of the new assessment teams have been diverted to State health departments, the original ACAT teams.
"Managing their allocated referrals within appropriate timeframes has now become increasingly difficult because they’re having to catch up these outstanding assessments from the beginning of the year."
Previously, The SOURCE has reported older Australians are waiting up to nearly a year to be assessed and some are slipping through the cracks altogether as assessment organisations don't have the clinical staff to meet demand.
Assessment organisations have been resorting to virtual assessments in attempts clear a backlog of referrals.
