Older person from first contact to first day of home care

The best-sourced process in this database and the worst result in it. The government publishes a 347 day median from first contact to first day of service. The assessment — the only step where anyone judges anything — accounts for 27 of those days.

aged-careAn older person seeking ongoing Support at Home services, entering the system through My Aged Care draft compare across jurisdictions

349 days elapsed
longest dependent chain

9 discrete steps
across 3 bodies

68% waiting on availability
scheduling or queue, not assessment

0 days saved by concurrency
vs. 349 if run end-to-end

Where the time goes

Critical-path days only. Steps that run alongside others are real work but do not lengthen the process, so counting them here would overstate the prize.

queue	230d	Waiting behind unrelated work in a backlog.
applicant	77d	Waiting on the applicant to supply or fix something.
assessment	35d	Someone is genuinely evaluating the merits.
scheduling	7d	Waiting for a person or committee to become available.

237 of 349 elapsed days are spent waiting for a person or a meeting rather than for a judgement to be formed. Removing that time changes no assessment standard and lowers no bar -- it is the cost of scheduling alone.

The process, step by step

Applies when: A person seeks Commonwealth-funded ongoing aged care support in their own home.

#	Step	Who	Why it waits	Clock	Typical	Basis
1	Contact My Aged Care and register application The older person, a family member or a GP makes contact and a client record is created.	My Aged Care	applicant	—	21 estimate	—
2	Screening and referral for assessment referral after Contact My Aged Care and register 314d slack	My Aged Care	queue	—	14 estimate	—
3	Wait for an assessment appointment assessment Waiting for an assessor to become available. after Screening and referral for assessment 287d slack	Aged care assessment organisation (Single Assessment System)	queue	—	27 published	—
4	Aged care needs assessment assessment The assessment that determines eligibility, approved services and priority category. after Wait for an assessment appointment 266d slack	Aged care assessment organisation (Single Assessment System)	assessment	—	21 estimate	—
5	Notice of decision and priority category decision The person is told what they are approved for and assigned a priority category: urgent, high, medium or standard. after Aged care needs assessment 252d slack	Department of Health, Disability and Ageing	assessment	—	14 estimate	—
6	Wait for a funded budget to be assigned registration The person is approved, and waits for funding to be released to them. after Notice of decision and priority category 63d slack	Department of Health, Disability and Ageing	queue	—	189 reported	—
7	Find a provider and sign a service agreement application The person selects a registered provider and finalises a service agreement within the allowed window. after Wait for a funded budget to be assigned 7d slack	My Aged Care	applicant	56	56 published	—
8	Services commence registration after Find a provider and sign a service agreement	—	scheduling	—	7 estimate	—
9	Interim entry-level support while waiting referral only if triggered Referral to entry-level support under the Commonwealth Home Support Programme during the wait. Triggered when: The person is referred to, and secures, interim support. It is not automatic. after Notice of decision and priority category 222d slack	My Aged Care	queue	—	30 estimate	—

on the critical path scheduling/queue = delay not caused by the assessment itself

Machine-flagged questions

These are produced automatically from the dependency graph. They are questions for a practitioner, not findings. Each one needs a person who has run this process to say whether the constraint is real.

Steps that may not need to wait

Interim entry-level support while waiting is a referral queued behind work by a different body. Does it consume that body's output, or is it merely sequenced that way by habit?

The same body asked more than once

aged-care-assessment (assessment) appears at Wait for an assessment appointment, Aged care needs assessment. Could these be a single sign-off?
myagedcare (referral) appears at Screening and referral for assessment, Interim entry-level support while waiting. Could these be a single sign-off?

Proposed changes

Three assessment workforces into one, on a five-year contract merge ~60d
Since December 2024 all aged care assessments have been done by one workforce using one tool, replacing Regional Assessment Services, Aged Care Assessment Teams and independent AN-ACC assessors. The contracts run five years.
Refer approved people into interim support automatically, not on request threshold
Interim entry-level support exists for people waiting for ongoing care. It is optional and depends on someone thinking to arrange it. Making it automatic on approval saves no time at all, and changes what the waiting is like.
Let people choose a provider and sign an agreement while they wait, not after parallelise ~56d
An older person waits about 189 days for a budget to be assigned, and is then given 56 days to research providers, compare them, meet them and sign an agreement. Nothing about that work requires the money to have arrived first.
The median wait fell and the queue grew. Both are true. digitise
The median wait for a Support at Home package fell from 344 days to 297. In the same period the number of people waiting rose from 100,191 to 106,977. A system can get faster per person and further behind in aggregate, and only one of those numbers makes headlines.

Sources

Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, published Support at Home wait time data: median 347 days from My Aged Care application to first day of service; median assessment wait 27 days in 2024-25; median 245 days from assessment approval to service commencement
Aged Care Act 2024 (Cth), commenced 1 November 2025
My Aged Care, published Support at Home guidance including the 56 day service agreement window
Senate inquiry into Support at Home, submissions closed 31 July 2026, reporting 24 November 2026

Something wrong here?

This page is wrong in some way -- every page like it is. If you have run this process, the most useful thing you can do is tell us which step took longer than we say and why. Edit data/processes/au-aged-care-access.toml and open a pull request, or send us the correction.