New year, same aged care crisis: Longer wait times, facility closures and hospital strain
Recent government data reveals that wait times for accessing aged care services have continued to grow year-on-year.
The Productivity Commission's Report on Government Services 2025 examined the times across three measures of the aged care process – aged care assessment, home care waits, and how long it took to get into residential care.
The report shows a considerable jump in aged care assessment times, with the longest waits averaging at 138 days in 2023-24, compared to 43 days in 2020-21 – an increase of 95 days.
“Nationally, the median elapsed time between ACAT approval and entry into aged care services increased by 100 per cent, between 2014-15 and 2023-24,”
- Report on Government Services 2025
Speaking on Sky News, Minister for Aged Care Anika Wells addressed the challenges faced by the Albanese government in implementing waitlist fixes.
“That’s what happens when you have an aged care sector in crisis and neglected for the nine long years it was. We are bringing it out of the brink,” Ms Wells said.
“You’d see from when we announced the package that [...] the additional $5 billion going into home care and new support at home launching on July 1st will see a record number of packages entering the system.
“I appreciate people waiting. I wish I could bring it out urgently and as fast as people would like but we’re doing our very best and people are seeing better results in terms of their care.”
The Productivity Commission report shows some general improvement for home care waitlists since 2017. The elapsed time for being 'assigned a home care package following ACAT approval' and those services starting are both going down.
Nonetheless, there is no denying that government services are finding it difficult to keep up with the nation's ageing population.
Since 2021, Australia has seen the closure of 103 aged care homes, with only 85 openings.
The number of available aged care beds in the country has increased overall in the last couple of years, but because of the wait to get into care, hospitals are still having to take up the slack.
The data shows that in 2022-23, older Australians waiting for a place in residential aged care used hospital resources at a rate of 13.2 patient days per 1,000, or 438,779 patient days total.
Despite this, the beginning of 2025 has seen multiple announcements of aged care facility closures, including the decommissioning of the Murrumbidgee's Corowa Hospital Nursing Home, Mercy Residential Aged Care Facility in Singleton and Burrangiri aged care respite and day centre in Canberra's south.
Murrumbidgee Local Health District (MLHD) chief Jill Ludford said of the closure that community members are opting for alternative models of care.
“Delivering residential aged care in a hospital-style setting does not provide a home-like environment for our current residents at Corowa Hospital Nursing Home and does not meet the expectations of the next generation of older people in our community,” she said.
Related: Life and death on the waitlist | Government warned of home care waitlist blowouts | Too many Australians are waiting for a home care package. Here’s how to fix the delays
In what seems to be adding insult to injury for the sector, Covid-19 deaths in aged care are currently more than double that of the height of the pandemic in 2020.
Australia recorded a total of 2,415 Covid-19 related deaths in residential aged care between February 2020 and May 2022, however, in the two and a half years since then the number has jumped to 4,778.
“That statistic, while I agree is alarming, is a result of [Covid] being more prevalent in the community because we aren’t locking down nursing homes [...] like the previous government did during the pandemic,“ Anika Wells told Sky News.
“But if you actually look at the rate of deaths, it was up to something like one in three when people contracted Covid-19 [...] during the pandemic. It’s now [...] somewhere between one in 20, one in 40 depending on the week reporting numbers that you’re looking at. That’s because we have antivirals ready to help people and they do make a huge difference.“
Email: [email protected]
