The Albanese Government is standing by its controversial aged care algorithm, ignoring an offer from the Opposition to provide a path through Parliament to immediately fix the assessment process at the centre of hundreds of complaints. Source: ABC News.
Shadow Aged Care Minister Anne Ruston secured support when she introduced a bill in the Senate that aimed to overhaul what she labelled a “cruel tool” used to determine how much funding Support at Home recipients received by adding the ability for a human to override assessments.
While the Integrated Assessment Tool (IAT) involves input from clinicians filling out a questionnaire about the older person, controversially, assessors cannot override the algorithm’s final decision on a participant’s funding.
Last week, the Coalition criticised Labor for shutting down debate on the bill when it moved to the lower house.
“Labor could put human override back into aged care assessments today, by passing our private senator’s bill in the House of Representatives,” Senator Ruston said.
“Instead, they blocked it even being debated, despite the fact it was supported by the Coalition, the Greens, and the crossbench.”
Despite acknowledging there had been “confronting” cases, the government is resisting calls to allow human override, insisting the system is working quickly, fairly and has led to only a small number of review requests.
In the first five months of the algorithm’s use, more than 1000 people have asked for their outcome to be reviewed, with 207 people successfully receiving a reassessment.
Labor has previously announced it would set up a new “escalation option” so people in “extenuating circumstances” could request their outcome be changed but legislation to enact this has not yet been introduced.
Health and Ageing Minister Mark Butler said he remained a “strong supporter” of the assessment framework.
“We’re doing everything that we can to make sure this tool delivers the sort of predictability and consistency that the royal commission recommended.”
In 2021, the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety recommended “a single assessment process based upon a common assessment framework and arrangements [be] followed by all assessors”.
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Labor resists widespread calls to ditch ‘cruel’ aged care funding algorithm (By Evelyn Manfield, ABC News)
