27/10/2025
☎️ My experience calling the Aged Care Hotline today
❌ To say that today’s experience with the Services Australia Aged Care hotline was ridiculous and frankly embarrassing for an industry I care deeply about is an understatement.
I was onboarding a new client and she needed to know her co-payment percentages for Support at Home before she could decide whether to sign. We thought we would use the time while doing paperwork to ring the 1800 number and ask directly.
The call went for 1 hour and 35 minutes.
We got absolutely nothing from it. 21 minutes on hold before the first person even answered.
The daughter introduced herself and immediately we were made to sit through a 60 second disclaimer spoken so fast not one of us could understand a word, but we agreed just to get moving.
They then tried to verify the daughter with a Centrelink password which she could not recall for her mother.
They switched to another method and began asking questions the daughter could not possibly know without access to mum’s files such as:
Bank BSB and account
Exact pension amount
Information contained in MyGov
When she said she did not have a CRN, the operator replied, “Yes you do, I am looking at it.” The tone was rude and unnecessary.
After 15 minutes of this, the daughter suggested they simply ask her mother who was right there, alert and capable to answer for herself.
The operator had, on her own assumption, decided that Mum was not able to speak for herself.
The verification burden on an 80 plus year old was totally unnecessary.
They then made this elderly woman answer:
➡️ Her CRN (luckily on her pension card)
➡️ The exact pension amount to the dollar
➡️ Her home phone number
➡️ Her full address and date of birth
That is a totally excessive amount of verification for a senior over the phone, especially someone who might be anxious, hard of hearing or unwell.
After another 30 minutes of being put on and off hold, the operator finally informed us that the percentages are only issued after you sign up to a package.
So the entire reason for the call, the deciding factor, can only be known after you commit to the thing you are trying to decide on.
It would be laughable if it was not so serious.
When we finally hung up, the three of us just looked at each other in disbelief. If three capable adults, one of them a provider, could not get an answer after all of that, how is a senior without family meant to survive this process without giving up?
This was the worst combination of disclaimers, gatekeeping and verification overload I have ever seen and it is happening right at the start of the biggest reform in aged care.
Oh boy, we are in trouble 💣
