Greens leader David Shoebridge is urging the government to use the final two sitting weeks of parliament to bring back human override in the aged care assessment tool, after a critical report from the commonwealth ombudsman.
The 104-page report, released on Monday, recommends legislative change so that aged care workers who assess older Australians for home support packages can amend the result when the tool reaches an incorrect funding decision. The ombudsman found the Integrated Assessment Tool (IAT) is producing unfair outcomes and has damaged public confidence in aged care.
Under the system, assessors meet older people and complete a questionnaire about their needs. An algorithm then determines whether funding is allocated and at what level.
"People are tearing their hair out at what's happening," Shoebridge said. He said aged care workers trying to help clients are being met with a computer that simply refuses, and that the ombudsman has now concluded the tool has been unfair from the start, delivering arbitrary outcomes to people who urgently need support.
Guardian Australia previously revealed that state health officials were so alarmed by algorithmic changes made to the IAT in November that they logged hundreds of cases in which vulnerable older Australians were badly under-assessed.
In a joint statement, aged care minister Sam Rae and health minister Mark Butler said the government would consider the report carefully and is acting on some recommendations. An independent review of how the IAT assesses and prioritises people has been commissioned. Of the ombudsman's 10 recommendations, six were accepted, while two were noted, including giving assessors human override and amending aged care legislation.
Rae said a new escalation pathway already allows an incorrect outcome to be sent to a delegate for review, adding human oversight to the system. Ombudsman Iain Anderson said he was concerned the pathway would not necessarily achieve what is needed, stressing the importance of assessors being able to change decisions that appear clinically inappropriate.
An aged care assessor with more than four decades of nursing experience, who spoke anonymously, said escalation is not good enough. "The delegate has not sat in front of that older person," she said, adding that escalating cases also costs time and administrative effort. She described severe anxiety among her colleagues and said she sometimes has to step away from the computer because she cannot press the button to accept the algorithm's decision. She said she is falling behind on her KPIs, working nights and weekends, and considering leaving the job.
Opposition and crossbench figures also criticised the government. Shadow aged care minister Anne Ruston told ABC Radio National on Tuesday that proper human override must be restored, calling the escalation pathway "only a Band-Aid on a symptom". Independent senator David Pocock accused the government of resisting attempts to fix a problem it created, and pointed to the ombudsman's finding that the department responsible for designing the system did not understand the legal framework it had built.
