6,436 Australians died waiting for home care last year — 17 every day

Seventeen Australians a day. That is how many people who had been assessed as needing funded aged care support died waiting for it in 2025–26.

The figure — 6,436 deaths across the year — was released by the federal health department this week, not proactively, but only after the government failed to comply with two Senate orders to disclose the data. That detail matters. These are not abstract projections. These are people who were assessed, approved, and placed on a waitlist — and who died before funding arrived.

For the adult children and partners navigating the aged care system right now, this number will not be surprising. It will be confirming.

What the data shows

The government’s Support at Home program replaced the former National Priority System in 2025–26. Under the new counting method, 6,436 people approved for a home care package died before receiving full funding. That is almost 34% more than the 4,812 deaths recorded under the previous system.

The government cautions against direct year-on-year comparison because the system and counting methodology changed. That caveat is technically accurate. It does not change the number itself.

More than 106,000 people were officially on the waitlist as of 30 June 2026. A Four Corners investigation in August found the real figure is closer to 154,000, because the government had changed how it counted people already receiving some support but waiting for a higher care level. Those people were being excluded from the headline number.

Average wait for a care package: approximately 12 months.

The government’s response, through Aged Care Minister Sam Rae, emphasised that 83,000 additional home care places were delivered in 2025–26, with 32,000 more rolling out this year. He noted that the death rate among people waiting for support was “significantly lower than the rate of death for older Australians in the broader population.” Both of these things can be true: progress is being made, and 17 people are still dying every day while waiting.

Both-and: system improvement and system failure are happening simultaneously

This is a story that resists easy framing.

The case for context: Australia’s aged care system has been in a documented funding and capacity crisis for years. The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety (2021) laid out the structural failure in detail. The Support at Home reforms represent a genuine attempt to increase capacity. A government delivering 83,000 additional places is not doing nothing. System change at this scale takes years; the 2025–26 figures capture a system mid-transition, not a static failure.

The case for urgency: The 6,436 figure is not a rounding error or a modelling artefact. It is a count of people who were assessed as needing help, approved for that help, and who died before it arrived. The Council on the Ageing’s CEO, Patricia Sparrow, has called it “an absolute tragedy” and stated that packages are needed “within about 30 days of being assessed.” The current average is twelve times that.

The fact that this data was released only after two Senate non-compliance events is not a procedural footnote. It is relevant information about what the government was willing to have scrutinised before it was forced into the open.

Independent Senator David Pocock described the figures as “shocking but sadly not surprising.” For anyone who has tried to navigate the system for an elderly parent in the past two years, the “sadly not surprising” is doing significant weight-bearing work in that sentence.

The families on the other side of this data are not a monolith. Some are managing with informal support while waiting; some are spending down savings on private care; some have no other options at all. The 17-a-day average flattens a reality that is not evenly distributed — rural and remote families, families from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, and families without the knowledge or resources to navigate the system face disproportionate wait times.

2 cents

For families navigating the system now: the practical levers are limited but real.

The first step if a family member is not yet assessed is an ACAT (Aged Care Assessment Team) referral through My Aged Care — the GP can initiate this, and the referral letter should document clinical urgency explicitly if it exists. An “urgent” flag on an ACAT assessment can affect prioritisation.

If already on the waitlist and the wait is becoming unsafe — that is, if the person is at risk of falls, hospital admissions, or is unable to manage daily activities — this should be communicated directly to My Aged Care (1800 200 422) and documented with the GP. Circumstances can change the priority level.

While waiting for a full package, the Commonwealth Home Support Programme and Carer Gateway services may bridge some gaps. These are not equivalent to a funded home care package. They are better than nothing while waiting for one.

For the system-level picture: the political temperature on aged care will increase as the Victorian state election approaches and the federal budget cycle turns to social spending. The 6,436 figure is unlikely to disappear from parliamentary debate in the next few months. Advocacy organisations — including COTA Australia — are calling for a 30-day access standard. That standard does not currently exist in legislation.

Verdict: yes — the data is unambiguous, the systemic failure is documented, and families navigating aged care need to know the scale of what they are up against.

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Sources cited

1. More Australians died on aged care waitlist, figures reveal — ABC News
2. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare — Aged Care data and statistics