Breakdown on Integrated Assessment Tool reviews revealed
Last night's public hearing for the Senate Inquiry into Support at Home was hastily convened for the last sitting day before the Easter holiday and unexpectedly brought forward by one hour.
The two-hour interrogation of the Government's Integrated Assessment Tool (IAT) was Chaired by Greens Senator Penny Allman-Payne.
Independent Senator David Pocock, who this week rallied 21 politicians to sign a letter to Aged Care Minister Sam Rae about Support at Home, and LNP Senator Anne Ruston appeared for the Committee.
Greg Pugh, First Assistant Secretary of the Reform Implementation Division of the Department of Health, said there have been 834 requests to review IAT decisions since 1 November 2025, compared to only 170 in FY25 - a nearly five-fold increase.
Of the requests:
- 344 were asking for a review of the Support at Home classification;
- 219 were about the priority classification;
- 55 sought review of both the classification and the priority decision;
- 116 were for non-approval of Support at Home;
- 11 were for non-approval of CHSP support; and
- a small number of other review were sought.
About half of those requests - 181 - have generated an outcome from the Government:
- 24 have resulted in a different decision to the IAT outcome
- 15 affirmed the original decision, and
- 142 were deemed to be from people who didn't have legal standing to make the application or applications that were withdrawn.
Pugh said any reassessments are "concerning" but the volume of complaints at around 0.5% of the total number of assessments was "within the realms of what we would expect" a complex program of the size of Support at Home.
The removal of human oversight from IAT algorithm decisions for Support at Home came under intense scrutiny during the hearing. Pugh conceded the Department had modelled reinstating manual override of the IAT, among other modelling it has done for the Government.
"Has Government asked us for advice around will we look at what it might take for clinical override to be reinstated? Yes," he said.
The hearing revealed the IAT allows 'free text' to be entered into inputs, but those inputs are not included in the algorithm.
Submissions to the Inquiry close 31 July 2026. You can read the submissions already published here.
