Sam Rae (Hawke, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Aged Care and Seniors) | Hansard source

Our escalation pathway will be the practical, responsible protection the system needs without compromising the care of older people. This change is in addition to the change we made earlier this year to amend the prioritisation systems queue rate in order to reduce the wait times of a person assessed as high priority from just over two months on average to just over one month and for our changes to ensure people with MND are automatically treated as urgent. Minister Butler and I have also directed the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing to undertake a rapid review of the Support at Home prioritisation mechanism to make sure that the right people are being fast-tracked for the care that is desperately needed. While this work is occurring, importantly, the median wait time from request to completion of these assessments is consistently under one month.

We promised older Australians that we would rebuild the aged-care system that we inherited in tatters, and that's exactly what our government is focused on doing.

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