Almost half of Canberra's most vulnerable elderly people are waiting more than three months for a place in an aged care home in a system that functions like a lottery, aged care advocates say.
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The median wait time for a residential aged care place in Canberra has blown out by more than two-and-a-half times in the past three years, prompting 48 aged care groups to band together to condemn current caps on the system.
But federal aged care minister Sussan Ley said Canberra retirement homes have a 10 per cent vacancy rate.
However those in need of a spot in the ACT's aged care system waited a median 137 days in 2014-15, up from 50 days in 2011-12, Productivity Commission figures revealed.
Three in five waited more than three months for a place and nearly one in two needing a high level of care were also left hanging for more than three months.
Wait times in the ACT were almost always higher than the Australian average and than in many other states, proponents of the Australians Deserve to Age Well campaign said.
The coalition of aged care advocacy groups is calling on the next federal government to introduce sweeping reforms of the aged care industry that includes removing caps and implementing a user-chooses model.
Aged and Community Services Australia president Paul Sadler said the system was a lottery because it was not based on demand but an arbitrary number of places per 1000 people over 70.
"It's basically a rationing tool that the federal government uses to keep control of costs in aged care," Mr Sadler said.
He said this cap on services, no matter how critically people needed them, was compounded by $1.2 billion of cuts to aged care providers over four years, announced in the 2016 budget.
"We think there's a bit of a double whammy going on here for older people," he said.
Wait times 'misleading': Sussan Ley
Department of Health figures state there are about 2600 operational residential care places in the ACT.
In the past two years the number of places has increased by around 600 places or 30 per cent, the department said.
Ms Ley described the "wait times" as outlined in the Productivity Commission data as "a little misleading".
"In this case the term 'waiting' is a little misleading, with a number of our eligible older ACT citizens deciding not to move to an aged care facility immediately," Ms Ley said.
"This can be for a range of reasons but still counts towards the number of days since someone became 'approved' as eligible for residential care.
"The number of available residential care places has jumped by 30 per cent in two years, and I think the fact we have a 10 percent vacancy rate for Canberra speaks for itself."
But shadow parliamentary secretary for aged care Senator Helen Polley said federal Labor would undertake an independent review of the aged care reforms, with a focus on funding models, to address the issues in the ACT and Australian system.
"The Liberal government has not been able to respond to the obvious gaps in demand and supply of appropriate levels of care for older Australians. As a result, older Australians have been left to languish without appropriate levels of care," she said.
'If this place wasn't around I would have been in trouble'
Maurice Linden counts himself as one of the lucky ones.
The 86-year-old has been living at the new Uniting Amala aged care facility in Gordon for almost three months.
When it became clear he needed to go into care after he could no longer use his walker to get around, his family took him to see two other homes they thought he would like but they were full.
"I believe it is hard at times [to find a place]. If this place wasn't around I would have been in trouble. This one had just opened up so I was lucky there," Mr Linden said.
"I was quite amazed because as you would imagine I had apprehensions about nursing homes because my father almost died in one and I thought they were terrible places but I was pleasantly surprised."
