Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors. Last week the department of health and aged care confirmed that there are more than 120,000 people waiting for a home-care assessment on top of the 87,000 people waiting for a package. The department also confirmed that no additional plans have been released beyond the attrition rate. Will the government release 20,000 new home-care places now to stop the waitlist growing longer?

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

I thank the member for Indi for her question and acknowledge her genuine interest in ensuring that our reforms to aged care deliver safety, dignity and compassionate care to older Australians across all of our communities. In the last term of parliament, as I said, the Minister for Communications, with support from across the parliament, passed the new Aged Care Act, and we're preparing to implement it on 1 November, which is just two months from today, along with the Support at Home program to which the member's question pertains.

At 31 March this year, the quarterly national priority system waitlist showed 87,597 people who have been approved for a home-care package through the clinical assessment process. As I said earlier, we continue to allocate an average of more than 2,000 home-care packages to people on the NPS every week. Those assessed as high priority will continue to receive their packages within a month. I'll say it again: those assessed as high priority will continue to receive their packages within a single month.

Assessment for broader aged-care services forms a different process—a related one but a different one. We acknowledge that wait times for aged-care assessments are longer than we would like, and we are working to address this. Record numbers of Australians are both seeking and receiving home-care services—more care to more Australians than ever before. Last year alone, over 521,000 home support and comprehensive assessments were completed, and we currently have more than 300,000 older Australians receiving home-care packages.

Only some people waiting for an assessment will ever end up on the national priority system. The assessment list contains those seeking lower level care, along with significant crossover and duplication of numbers on the national priority system. For example, 99 per cent of people waiting for a home-care package at their approved level are already receiving home care through a lower level home-care package or are approved for Commonwealth Home Support Package services and so are already receiving some level of care. The median wait time for an aged-care-needs assessment, from when a referral is issued to when the support plan is completed, is currently 25 days and continues to reduce under our new single assessment system.

There are a number of reasons why home-care packages have freed up, but the important thing here is that every allocation of a package means another older Australian gets the care that they need. We know the system is not fit for purpose, and that's exactly why we're reforming this system from the ground up. Big reforms don't happen overnight, but we're working to deliver a smooth transition in just two months from today—one that minimises impacts to older Australians and gets them the care that they need quicker than it has been done before.