Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, , 3:29:37 to 3:37:05
Officials provide data on assessment referrals, median wait times, and the prevalence of telehealth assessments for older Australians.
Topics: Social services, Health
Speakers: Senator The Hon Anne Ruston, Ms Rachel Blackwood, Mr Greg Pugh, Ms Sonja Stewart, Senator Penny Allman-Payne
Um just finally on this, um, how many people are currently waiting for assessment?
Rachel Blackwood, Assistant Secretary Access Dementia and First Nations Division. We released yesterday our latest assessment data quarterly report which covers the quarter July to September of this year. So as at the 30th of September 2026, there were 71,75 assessment referrals on hand nationally.
Okay. And is it possible to break down the number of that 71,000 into those that are in the community and those that are currently in a hospital setting?
So as we've discussed previously, because the median wait time for a hospital assessment is one day, there doesn't tend to be people in the in the wait list waiting for hospital assessment.
So that's great. So can you provide the current average and median time from referral to assessment and from assessment to approval?
So I've I've got the median wait time nationally from the time of referral is issued until the time a support plan is completed. That is 21 days for the most recent quarter. So that has gone down.
Okay. So we know that there are a series of different um sort of time periods that exist. Is it possible to provide us with a time frame and a timeline, including numbers and times from the referral? Right the way through until somebody gets their package at 100%.
I can speak to the different stages of the phone.
I know I understand what the different stages are. I'm just asking you, can you provide the timeline that provides us with the numbers of people and the average wait time in each of those? So that there is no piece missed out from when they get first referred to when they get 100% of their package. Is that timeline available in written form, please?
Whether we cover that in our um section 342A wait times report, Senator. Uh, and if not, we can absolutely take it on notice.
That would be really good given that I asked for every estimate. Um just um interested, how many assessments in the quarter that you've just reported on the the July to September quarter were done by phone as opposed to in person?
Uh the telehealth rate for the most recent quarter was 24%.
24%. So 24% of older Australians are not actually visually seen by person in their assessment in.
I think it's important to note that um some of that 24% might reflect an older person's choice around how they get that assessment done.
How many people choose to not see somebody?
We don't have data on which clients choose, but it it is as Ms. Stewart and I actually that would be um practice for assessors to to ask a client for consent in the circumstances where telehealth was proposed, and some older Australians do request telehealth assessors for uh their own particular reasons.
Yep, no, I understand that. I'm just asking you how many. I mean, if you've got um 24%, is it one percent or is it 23% or yeah?
I'm not sure if you're not gonna be able to do that.
Yeah, surely if Ms. Stewart, Ms. Stewart, surely if you thought it was relevant to raise that as an issue, it must be a substantial number of that 24%. Is it?
I guess I was just um the reason why I was raising it was because one of the key sort of aspects of the act is around choice of older people. So I was just expressing that one of the ways that the system is designed, is it might be an older person's choice.
And that's absolutely fine, but in terms of the relevance of this, but was it one person or was it thousands of people?
Actually, collect that Senator.
Um do you log how many assessors, or can you tell us how many assessors have left your employee over the last two years?
Assessors. So the assessors um they're sorry. Yeah, yeah, they're contracted. Um state and territory governments undertake a hundred percent of the hospital assessments and 40% of the community, and there's a mix of uh non-government uh not-for-profit for profit organisations, so they're not the department staff.
So you don't log how many assessors have left the system because obviously the assessments that they're doing are being provided to you.
Yeah. I don't I'm not sure I don't have that figure to hand. I'm sorry, do you have that, Ms. McMurdo?
No, what the thing that we do have visibility of is the number of active assessors in the system at any given time that has trended up uh since the commencement of the single.
Yeah, I'm more interested in understanding who's how many have left.
We don't hold that.
Okay. I'm gonna have to share the call and then I'll final question. So Mr. Pugh, um, I think when we were discussing, I'm not sure it was probably during one of our gazillion inquiries where we've um seen each other. Um you said that you put uh a number of options um forward in relation to um amendments to this particular uh the the single assessment tool. Just wondering, and you took on notice, I believe, um, options you said that the putting forward least worst options. So I'm wondering, did you ever um come up with the all the or you in a position to provide the options that you provided to government uh to the department?
Yeah, Senator Thanks. So um the options included, there was a range of options we may also looked at anything that um we could do to to remedy. I've just um all remedy or confirm the government's decision uh and some of the um options that we were discussing included. Can we is there a hook to amend the age care rules if we need to? Uh is there an ability to allow for uh assessor discretion to change the classification level uh or do we align at the assessment manual to legislation and the rules. I think I was saying before to a previous question that all of that optionality was being undertaken in a parallel with going back looking at the actual original government decision, looking at the authority that we were operating under and looking at what the public statements and the like have been made. So we do look at a range of options and the option that ensured that our administrative practices were uh in accordance with government's decision and in accordance with the legislation was to update the uh assessment manual.
Okay, has that been provided in writing?
I'm not sure of the status of the quant, but that is what we are putting back to the um to that inquiry committee.
Okay, Jair.
Thank you very much, Senator Ruston. Senator Allman Payne, over to you.