‘Catastrophic’ fears: health staff made lists of concerning cases days after Australia’s aged care funding tool launch

Within days of the launch of a tool designed to determine aged care funding levels, people were being under-assessed by the algorithm, documents show. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

State health officials were so alarmed by a controversial federal government aged care funding tool that they kept a log of hundreds of cases where vulnerable older Australians were severely under-assessed.

It also led to one senior state health official writing to the federal government to warn of “catastrophic” outcomes from its algorithmic tool – used to determine support levels for in-home care – and that her staff were “fielding calls from distraught clients and assessors”.