Since July this year, The Weekly SOURCE has been highlighting the total inadequacies of the Australian Department of Health, Disability and Ageing's new Single Assessment System, which is meant "to simplify and improve aged care assessments."
The Weekly SOURCE's Exclusive stories:
- Health Dept’s Single Assessment System is failing seniors was published on 30 July including an interview with the Founder and Director of See Me Aged Care Navigators, Coral Wilkinson.
- Elderly couple conduct their own observations as Single Assessment System moves to phone calls to clear backlog
- The Department, in the Senate Inquiry into Aged Care Service Delivery, revealed for the first time 121,596 people were waiting for an aged care assessment as of the end of July 2025.
Last night's ABC 7.30 program looked at the issues The Weekly SOURCE has been covering relentlessly - the wait times for aged care assessments. Anne Connolly reported on a terminally ill man forced to wait eight weeks for an urgent reassessment of his support needs, who died four weeks before the reassessment due date.
She spoke to Coral Wilkinson, who is a former ACAT assessor, who told the ABC people are waiting up to 10 months to be assessed. Afterward, 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson interviewed Aged Care and Seniors Minister Sam Rae, who said wait times for aged care assessments have fallen to a median of 23 days. NB: The median is the middle value in data arranged from smallest to largest.
There are now 116,000 people waiting for an aged care assessment, nearly as many as the 121,000 waiting for a Home Care Package - in total, nearly a quarter of a million people are waiting on care.
To see the issues with the Single Assessment System taken up by the taxpayer-funded broadcaster has to be welcomed as they are clearly reading The Weekly SOURCE.