Politics

Greens push for human override of aged care assessment tool

Marian ElleryPublished 5m ago2 min readBased on 9 sources
Greens push for human override of aged care assessment tool
Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels

Greens senator David Shoebridge has urged the government to use the last two sitting weeks of parliament to restore human override to the aged care assessment tool. Shoebridge, a senator for New South Wales and the Greens spokesperson on digital rights and AI, described the tool as "unfair".

The tool is called the Integrated Assessment Tool, or IAT. Under the process, an assessor meets an older person and completes a questionnaire about their needs. An algorithm then decides whether funding should be allocated and at what level. Human override would allow an assessor to change that automated result.

The Commonwealth Ombudsman, Iain Anderson, has published a 104-page report on automation and oversight in aged care. The report states that the types of home-based aged care services an assessor can recommend depend on the outcome of the automated decision. The Ombudsman found that the IAT is leading to unfair outcomes and has undermined public confidence in aged care.

Among its recommendations, the Ombudsman proposed changing legislation so that aged care workers assessing older Australians for home support packages can amend the outcome when the algorithm makes an incorrect funding decision.

Aged Care Minister Sam Rae and Health Minister Mark Butler said in a joint statement that the government will "consider the Ombudsman's report carefully" and is acting on some of its recommendations. The government has also commissioned an independent review of how the IAT assesses and prioritises people.

Of the Ombudsman's 10 recommendations, six were accepted. Two, including instating human override for assessors and amending aged care legislation, were noted. Rae has said that a new escalation pathway has been introduced, allowing a wrong outcome to be escalated for review by a delegate.

Anderson said it is important for assessors to be able to change decisions that appear clinically inappropriate. He expressed concern that the escalation pathway will not necessarily do that.

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