Simple solution: until the data is clear, human assessors should be allowed to override the integrated assessment tool in the Support at Home system.
Appeals against home-care assessment decisions recently increased more than 20-fold in about four weeks.
At the end of last year, only 19 people nationally had lodged a formal appeal against a problematic assessment decision, but this had risen to 414 appeals by 23 January, according to figures aired in Senate estimates a couple of weeks ago.
This suggests something has changed fundamentally.
There is increasing evidence that the computer algorithm which has been allocating home care funding since 1 November 2025 is producing results that frequently don’t accurately reflect older people’s needs.
Concerns about the impact of these algorithm-driven assessments on older Australians and their families have recently been raised in Parliament as well as increasingly discussed in the mainstream media.
LinkedIn commentators have provided numerous examples of how people are being adversely affected.
But the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing has consistently stood by the reliability of the integrated assessment tool and the associated algorithm.
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In a Senate estimates hearing on 11 February, a Department representative claimed that “the algorithms have been extensively trialled on tens – if not hundreds – of thousands of test cases”.
Where is the data from this trial? What methodology was used? Were the results of the trial independently verified?
The Guardian has reported (6 March) that their questions to the Department about the algorithm’s development were not answered.
Older people and their families deserve to know whether the mechanism used for assessment decision making is fair, but in the absence of confirmatory evidence, it appears that it is not.
The right of clinical assessors to override inappropriate results from the algorithm was unexpectedly withdrawn with little explanation on the eve of its implementation.
While the issues with the algorithm are being resolved, a practical interim step would be to reinstate assessors’ right to override the results in cases where their professional judgement is that the older person’s capacity to live safely at home wouldd be undermined if the decision was not corrected.
Adrian Morgan is the general manager at Flexi Care, an independent, community-owned, not-for-profit provider of aged services based in Brisbane.
This article was first published on Mr Morgan’s LinkedIn feed. Read the original article here.