Lynne Meehan’s 91-year-old dad, John Wilson, was diagnosed with sepsis last September.
That was the start of the family’s frustrating experience with accessing the aged care system.
"I worked in intensive care for 28 years and have never seen anything so complicated or so difficult," Meehan, 57, said.
Last November, the federal government overhauled the way older Australians are assessed for support at home. Called the integrated assessment tool (IAT), it involves an assessor carrying out a lengthy, wide-ranging survey of the person's needs.
They then put their findings into an algorithm, and an outcome is provided automatically, with how much funding support the person gets, and a priority level.
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"I had no idea that it all got fed into a machine and a number got spat out," Meehan said.
John Wilson received $58,000 annually in funding on a Level 7 package – the second-highest support level. It was more than the family expected.
The bigger issue, though, was that the algorithm deemed his case a low priority. The family was told he would have to wait 10 months for his support.
"I said, look, Dad, I know you can't fight, but I will fight for you to get this package'.
"Because he was pretty resigned to the fact that he'd be gone before he got anything," Meehan said.
In January, she wrote several letters to the aged care minister Sam Rae.
"At almost 92 years of age, 10 months is …. quite possibly a lifetime in my father's case,” she wrote in one letter.
"Dad had no way of holding a phone or able to push the buttons like 000 and know that that had gone through," she told SBS News.
"It's really important that he (was provided with a device with) one button to push that he would know would get him some sort of outside attention if he needed it."
Her parents used their part-pension instead and were out of pocket $2,000 to install a ramp and rent a fall monitor.
John Wilson died in late April. His funding came through three weeks later.
"It’s just an absolute kick in the guts," Meehan said.
Aged Care Minister Sam Rae said his thoughts are with John’s family.
"We've always said that we would continue to review and refine the assessment tool," he told SBS News in a statement.
"While we know there’s much more to do here, we’ll continue to listen to the experiences of older Australians so we can get the best outcomes for them."
The government quietly launched a rapid review into the prioritisation mechanism of the IAT, with advice expected to be provided within three months. From June 29, a person will be able to bounce the survey back to the assessor if there is a clear inputting error.
Emeritus Professor of public health at La Trobe University Hal Swerissen said standardised processes were welcome, but it was inevitable that the algorithm would make some errors.
"The way to deal with that is to allow assessors to override the algorithm in circumstances where they think it's made a mistake," he told SBS News.
As at March 2026, 989 people have requested a review of their outcome, which is up from 178 in the 2024-25 financial year, under the old system.
Of the 606 finalised cases, 132 needed reassessing.
Health Minister Mark Butler defended the system, saying there was "substantial human involvement" in the process.
"The number of applications or decisions that have been changed as a result of that process is vanishingly small," he told reporters earlier this month.
But Opposition health spokeswoman Anne Ruston described his comments as "ridiculous".
"Well you tell that to the families of older Australians who've died because the computer has said that their needs are low priority… and they pass away in the meantime," she told SBS News.
Experts believe those figures are underestimated, because of the "bureaucratic" process involved in requesting a review, which typically takes 90 days to get a response.
The national peak body for geriatric medicine has been scathing of the IAT’s algorithm tool, raising since hearing the experiences of clinicians.
"A number of staff have resigned because of the moral distress that they feel … assessors feel [the outcome] is wrong, but can do nothing about it," the Australian and New Zealand Society for Geriatric Medicine President Susan Kurrle told SBS News.
"Those older people who don't get the support they need … a lot of them struggle on and then end up in hospital, and hospitals are not good places for older people to have to stay while these problems are sorted out."
There is currently no public data around the accuracy of the IAT. Swerissen says he has made a “conservative” estimation it would have an error rate of within one per cent.
"At the top of the scale, if you get it wrong by one level, and you've underestimated the needs for someone, then that's four hours a week of care that they're not getting," Swerissen said.
The Commonwealth ombudsman launched an investigation into the IAT in April after receiving complains about the tool.
"We conduct our investigations in private and will only comment further when the investigation has been completed or substantially progressed," a spokesperson said in a statement.
The inspector-general of Aged Care Natalie Siegel-Brown also raised concerns in Senate Estimates earlier this month.
"I don't think I'm clear on why that human overrides missing it, and I do have very grave concerns about that," she said.
The Coalition is ramping up the pressure for the government to make changes. Ruston will introduce a bill to the Senate in the upcoming sitting fortnight to ensure a human can override an outcome.
"I really hope the government is not pigheaded about this, because there's so many older Australians that have come forward," Ruston said.
The Greens and independent senator David Pocock say they will wait to see the bill’s details but support the proposed amendments in principle.
"From a government who was so aggressively pursued the coalition government over Robodebt, you would think they might have learnt a lesson from that, and yet they seem to, to a large extent, be repeating the same mistakes," Ruston said.
"[The government] has made a mistake … I think it's one of those things where it's reasonably inevitable that they're going to have to change it," Swerissen said.
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