Minister grilled over human involvement in aged care assessments

Aged Care Minister Sam Rae has defended the new aged care assessment tool. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)

Aged Care Minister Sam Rae has strongly defended the tool used to determine how much funding individuals should receive to support them living at home, arguing it is both faster and fairer.

The government has had to reassess funding for 132 people following hundreds of complaints about the tool that uses an algorithm to determine payment levels.

The Health and Aged Care Department has been given three months to review the process and make recommendations.

The aged care minister has refused to admit there is no human override in the final step of the government's new algorithm for assessing older people for at-home funding support, in a tense interview exchange.

Despite the government ordering an urgent review of the algorithm-assisted tool, Sam Rae strongly defended the "much improved" system as leading to faster and more equitable decisions for people seeking access to a Support at Home package.

The Integrated Assessment Tool is used to determine the level of government funding a person should get and the priority they should be given.

But it has come under heavy scrutiny and subject to hundreds of complaints, because while assessors input information about the person into the tool, it uses an algorithm to decide the outcome, which cannot be overruled.

But when pressed on the process, Mr Rae refused to agree there was no ability for human intervention after the algorithm had determined the outcome because humans were involved in inputting and reviewing data.

"It's done in a standardised way," he told Radio National Breakfast, in support of the new process.

"There is a mathematical component, that's the nature of a process. An algorithm is just a process. There is a process by which the aged care rules are applied. That's an automated process.

"The subjective piece, if you like, is the assessment piece — that's the piece that captures the needs of the older person.

A new algorithm for deciding how much aged care support people can receive to stay living at home is being blamed for reducing care to older Australians.

"The objective piece is the application of the rules. That's the part that's standardised".

He insisted the decision was not made to save money, but because it led to faster and fairer assessments.

Mr Rae pointed to more than 130,000 assessments done in the March quarter of this year.

"Median wait times are down under a month consistently, so people aren't waiting as long and we're getting much fairer outcomes," he said.

Labor