50,000 removed from official aged care waitlist due to counting method change

A Four Corners investigation can reveal the true number of people waiting for full aged care funding at home stands at almost 154,000 — not 100,000 as officially reported.

More than 53,000 people, who in the past would have been counted on the waitlist published by the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, have been excluded since government reforms started in November last year.

This has happened because the department has a new method of counting, which means people receiving interim funding have been excluded from the waitlist.

Prior to the reforms, people received interim funding in the form of a lower-level package.

They remained on the official waitlist until they received their approved package.

If the waitlist were counted using the same method applied for the nine years prior, the waitlist would be at its longest since before the aged care royal commission was announced in 2018.

Under the new system which started on November 1, once someone begins receiving an interim payment of 60 per cent of their approved funding, they are taken off the official waitlist — even though they have not yet received full funding.

More than 90 per cent of people being granted funding under the Support at Home program are provided with an interim package of 60 per cent, which they remain on for an average of 10 weeks before getting their full funding.

This change is one of the key reasons why the waitlist numbers appeared to drop immediately after the government's "once in a generation" reforms came into effect on November 1 last year.

Official figures of the waitlist before Support at Home was introduced showed that on October 31, 2025, there were 107,281 people waiting for their full aged care funding.

That waitlist dropped to 94,963 on December 31, 2025, after those receiving interim funding were excluded from the waitlist.

When Four Corners put these findings to Aged Care Minister Sam Rae, he denied there had been any change, saying "the waiting list has always been manufactured or calculated the way that it currently is".

Asked directly whether the current waitlist included people receiving interim funding, Mr Rae said they did not. "No, once people receive the care package at the level that they have been assessed for, they no longer count [on the official waitlist]."

A spokesman for the minister sent a statement later, saying that "to have people remain in a queue when they are already receiving their allocated level of care would skew the distribution of places".

More than 4,800 people died in 2024–25 while waiting for their approved home care funding.

'Unacceptable'

Former acting Inspector-General of Aged Care Ian Yates said it was "unacceptable" that the government had changed its reporting method.

"The government needs to come clean and at least report these [people on interim funding] as an additional figure in their reports so they can be monitored," he said.

The department's latest figures put the waitlist at 100,191 at March 31, but using the method applied consistently since reporting began in 2017, the true figure is 153,909.

Four Corners uncovered the discrepancy after comparing evidence given at Senate estimates on June 2 this year, where officials disclosed that people on interim funding had been taken off the waitlist, meaning 53,718 people had been excluded as of March 31.

Combined, it means the number of people waiting for full funding is 153,909.

In May, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese acknowledged problems in the system, saying "the state of aged care is not good enough," and pointing to "billions of dollars of additional funding in the budget".

Demand for aged care has increased dramatically since the royal commission was announced, with the number of people receiving home care jumping four-fold to more than 364,700.

Also potentially adding to the bottleneck is that more assessments are being completed. 

Since the reforms, the average number of completed assessments has risen from 46,500 per quarter in 2017-18 to more than 79,700 per quarter in March 2026.

Labor's record

In its first three years in power, Labor released fewer home care packages than the Coalition did during its last three years in power — averaging less than 37,700 per quarter compared to more than 45,700 under the Coalition.

This was also below the average during the royal commission, of 41,445 per quarter.

Natalie Siegel-Brown, who recently resigned as Inspector-General of Aged Care, told Four Corners that restricting funding to help people stay at home amounted to a false economy.

"It might look like a saving in the short term, but in that wait time, decline accelerates … and we end up paying a much higher cost for them to go into residential aged care," she said.

On average, it costs the commonwealth more than $117,000 a year to subsidise a person in residential aged care, compared with less than $30,000 for care at home.

Since the Support at Home program was introduced, Labor has boosted its output, roughly doubling the number of packages released per quarter, compared to its three-year average.

Aged Care Minister Sam Rae said, "While we know there's much more to do … our methodical work to secure more care for more older Australians than ever is making a material impact".

Watch Four Corners' full investigation, The Waiting Game on ABC iview.