SA’s aged-care wait times blow out to an average seven month wait time

It takes 206 days on average to get into a South Australian aged care home now. Here’s the latest wait times and how SA compares with other states.

Waiting times to get into an aged-care home in South Australia have quadrupled in a decade, with the average wait now almost seven months. Picture: Patrick Gorbunovs / The Northern Star

Waiting times to get into an aged-care home in South Australia have quadrupled in a decade, with the average wait now almost seven months.

It took 206 days, on average, from receiving an Aged Care Assessment Team (ACAT) assessment and entering aged-care services in SA in 2019-20, new Productivity Commission figures showed.

That was the second-longest average wait time in the country, after the ACT, which had an average wait of 314 days.

SA’s wait time had more than doubled since 2015-16, when it was an average of 89 days, and had more than quadrupled since 2010-11, when it was an average of just 48 days.

About 54 per cent of the 5306 South Australians admitted to aged-care homes in 2019-20 had waited fewer than nine months, while just 13.6 per cent waited less than one month. Nationally, the average wait time to get into aged care was 148 days last financial year – lower than the 152 days the year before, but higher than the 84 days of five years ago.

For South Australians seeking aged-care services to help them stay in their own home, it was a six-month wait to get a level 1, or basic-care needs, package after an ACAT assessment, the data showed.

SA’s wait times to get into an aged care home after an ACAT assessment more than doubled since 2015-16, when it was an average of 89 days. Picture: News Corp

It was a 31-month wait for a level 4, or high-care needs, package on average, a 20- month wait for a level 3 or intermediate-care package, and a 14-month wait for a level 2 or low-care need package.

The wait for home care had dropped slightly from the year before, when it was an average of seven months for a level 1 package and a 34-month wait for a level 4 package.

Meanwhile, there were 829 complaints about aged-care services in SA in 2019-20, up from 698 the year before, and 491 in 2017-18, the Productivity Commission data showed.

The Advertiser reported on Monday that more than 10,500 South Australians had been approved to receive aged-care services in their own homes but were still waiting.

But the wait list had decreased from more than 12,662 people in mid-2018.

Advocates have been urging the Federal Government to fund more home-care packages to reduce the massive wait list.

It funded an extra 10,000 new home-care packages in December, in addition to 23,000 extra home-care places announced in the October Budget.

The snapshot of wait times comes as the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety is due to hand down its findings next month.