The Albanese Government will commission an independent review of the aged care classification and prioritisation assessment mechanisms, as the latest step in a series of refinements the Government is making to ensure older Australians can have confidence in the assessment process.
Since the commencement of Support at Home, on 1 November 2025, the Government has been listening and responding to feedback from older Australians, their families and stakeholders, and in particular about how the Integrated Assessment Tool works.
We have made refinements where people’s experience of the system shows it is needed. We’ve changed the Aged Care Rules to help more people receive care faster, to ensure the accuracy of assessment inputs and to recognise Motor Neurone Disease as a discrete, specific condition warranting urgent priority for Support at Home.
This review will build on that work and respond to feedback that while these changes have made improvements, the assessment systems are not always getting it right. The Government will set out a clear plan to ensure the classification and priority mechanisms reflect the care needs of older Australians.
With nearly 12 months of real-world assessments now completed, this independent, clinically informed review will examine how the classification and prioritisation mechanisms work, building on the refinements already made to get it right for every older person.
The reviewer will be empowered to recommend what changes, if any, are needed to the assessment mechanisms to ensure they appropriately allocate care based on an older person's circumstances and priority, while maintaining sustainability in the broader aged care system.
To ground the review in clinical expertise, an expert advisory group will also be convened, bringing together experts in gerontology and assessment. The group will contain geriatric medicine, dementia care, allied health, CALD and First Nations health expertise, alongside assessment organisations, aged care providers, unions and advocates for older people.
Terms of Reference will be released in the coming weeks. The review will report to Government, and the report will be published in full and tabled in Parliament, in the first half of 2027.
This review is in addition to the new escalation pathway set to be delivered through the Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Aged Care Commissioner and Other Measures) Bill 2026, which is before the Parliament. Its commissioning reflects constructive engagement with the Coalition on the passage of that bill.
From January 2027, older people in exceptional circumstances will be able to access a new option for case review – with the Health Department able to change Support at Home classification and priority levels where needed.
The Government previously commissioned a rapid review of the prioritisation algorithm, focused on identifying immediate adjustments to the way priority is assessed. This review will build on that work by looking at the underlying structure of the assessment mechanism.