The median wait fell and the queue grew. Both are true.
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.
Steps this would change
Rationale
This entry starts by giving credit, because the department has earned it.
The Aged Care Act 2024 Wait Times Report, published for the first time on 12 May 2026, publishes both the median and the average wait. For ongoing residential aged care those are 167 days and 396 days. For the June 2026 quarter, 138 days and 356.
That gap is the most informative thing in the report. A median of six months and an average of thirteen means a long tail: half of people are through in under six months, and a substantial minority wait far longer and pull the average to more than twice the median.
This database has spent a lot of pages criticising published statistics — the social housing median computed only over people who were housed, the NDIS clock that starts once an application is deemed complete, visa medians hiding a fifty-fourfold tail. Publishing the median and the mean together is the correct answer to all of them. It makes the tail visible rather than hiding it.
What is still missing is the stock beside the flow.
- The median wait for an ongoing Support at Home package fell from 344 days to 297 days.
- The number of people waiting for one rose from 100,191 to 106,977 in three months.
- Applications awaiting a triage decision fell from 65,576 at 31 December 2025 to 48,592 at 31 March 2026.
Two of those are improvement and one is not, and they are not contradictory. A system can process people faster while receiving them faster still. The median describes the experience of people who got through; the stock describes whether the system is keeping up. Report either alone and you can tell any story you like.
The proposal. Publish, in the same report and on the same page: median wait, average wait, number waiting at period end, and arrivals against completions for the period. That last pair is the run rate — the same thing this site asks for in remote housing — and it is the difference between a queue that is shrinking and one that is not.
Who acts: the Commonwealth, in a report it has just started publishing.
What is being traded away
Adding numbers does not make a report clearer, and this one is already dense. Median, mean, stock, arrivals, completions, by service type, by quarter, is a lot to put in front of a family deciding whether to apply for their mother. There is a real risk of a report that is complete and unread, and the audience for these figures is not only analysts.
A growing stock is not automatically bad. More people waiting can mean more people applying, which can mean the system is reaching people it previously missed — which is what the 3 Day Guarantee did in childcare and what better awareness does everywhere. Reporting the stock without the context of demand growth would invite the conclusion that a program is failing when it is being discovered.
Run-rate reporting creates pressure on the wrong variable. A department measured on clearing a queue can clear it by assessing faster and approving less, or by triaging more people out at the front. The 17,000 fall in triage backlog is almost certainly genuine improvement; a metric that rewards it would also reward the version that is not.
And this project should be honest that the data moved under it. The
home care process on this site was built against a
published 347 day median and models at 349. The newer figure is 297. The model
has not been rebuilt, and the older number is still on that page with its source
attached. That is what a database with estimate-grade durations looks like when
better data arrives, and the right response is to say so rather than quietly
restate.
Precedent
The department is already doing most of this. The inaugural Aged Care Act 2024 Wait Times Report, published 12 May 2026, publishes medians and averages together — which is better practice than almost any other dataset in this database. What is missing is the stock reported beside the flow, in the same place.
Sources
- Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, inaugural Aged Care Act 2024 Wait Times Report, published 12 May 2026, covering commencements 1 November 2025 to 31 March 2026
- Ongoing residential aged care: average 396 days against a median of 167 days; June 2026 quarter median 138 days and average 356 days
- Median wait for an ongoing Support at Home package falling from 344 days to 297 days; number waiting rising from 100,191 to 106,977 as at 30 June
- Applications awaiting a triage decision falling from 65,576 at 31 December 2025 to 48,592 at 31 March 2026