The Government's New Aged-Care Computer Tool Got It Badly Wrong — And Staff Knew Within Days
State health officials kept lists of hundreds of aged-care cases where older Australians were badly under-assessed by the federal government's new computer-based aged care funding tool, according to documents obtained by Guardian Australia under freedom of information laws. Officials from four states and the Northern Territory recorded ongoing errors in the system since the tool, called the Integrated Assessment Tool or IAT, was switched on the previous November. Guardian Australia
Here is how the tool works. Aged care assessors from state and territory health departments fill out a questionnaire about each person. A computer program then uses those answers to decide how much funding a person gets for help at home and how urgently they need it. The program was built by a small team inside the federal health department. Just days before the tool launched, the department told assessors they were not allowed to overrule the computer's decision — even if they thought it was wrong.
And wrong it was, according to documents from the federal Department of Health and Aged Care. Within days of the tool going live, people were being under-assessed. Assessors said they felt powerless and ethically conflicted. Clients were left at risk of getting worse, staying stuck in hospital, or being forced into a nursing home.
WA Health director general Dr Shirley Bowen emailed her federal counterpart on 24 November with a blunt warning. She said that without any room for human judgement, a small but vulnerable group of older people could face "catastrophic outcomes" while waiting for the computer to decide what help they could get. She also warned the tool could delay people leaving hospital, which would block beds for others who need them.
The warnings came early and from more than one state. On 7 November, a staff member with Aged Care Assessment Victoria emailed the federal health department about concerning results from the tool and the fact that assessors could not override them. The assessors felt conflicted because they did not believe the computer's outcome reflected what clients actually needed. On 13 November, a representative from NT Health emailed the federal government with similar concerns, attaching examples of assessments where the tool had produced unexpected results. They said assessors were disheartened they could no longer use their own professional judgement and experience.
Health Minister Anika Wells announced the IAT as a new tool to improve aged care assessments when it was first unveiled, describing it as the new tool for assessing the eligibility of older people for government-subsidised aged care. health.gov.au The department's own user guide, updated as recently as 28 August 2026, says the IAT aims to drive good practices in the assessment of older people's support needs and eligibility for Australian Government-subsidised aged care. health.gov.au
The FOI documents add to a pattern of reporting on the tool's failures. In July 2026, Guardian Australia reported that the tool frequently under-assessed people and left them without adequate care, and that Aged Care Minister Sam Rae was defending the tool. Guardian Australia In August, the Greens said the tool was under-assessing far more older Australians, many of whom may not know how to contest the outcome, and that a fifth of older Australians who challenged an automated decision had it changed. Guardian Australia
What the FOI documents make clear is that the problems were not discovered months later. They were flagged within days of the tool going live, by the very assessors the system depends on, and escalated to the most senior levels of state health departments within weeks. The department was told, in writing, that its computer program was producing results assessors considered wrong, that the override ban was removing the safety net, and that the consequences for a vulnerable group of older people could be catastrophic.
The design choices here matter. The computer program was built by a relatively small team within the federal department, and the decision to stop assessors from overruling it was made days before launch, not after a trial period. Think of it like a speed camera that nobody is allowed to contest — even when everyone can see it is booking the wrong cars. The department chose consistency over human judgement, and did so before it had any real-world evidence that the program was getting things right. The emails from Victoria and the NT, sent within the first fortnight of operation, suggest it was not.
A one-in-five reversal rate, as the Greens pointed out in August, is the kind of figure that would trigger a serious review in most government systems. The FOI documents now show that the people closest to the tool were raising the alarm from the very first week. The question for the department, and for Minister Rae, is not whether the tool has problems. That is established. It is what has been done about them in the months since those first warnings landed.
