Canberrans face the longest waits in the country to enter residential aged care after being approved by health care professionals.
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The territory also has some of the highest rates of complaints about aged care facilities in the country, a Productivity Commission report on government services released on Thursday said.
Fifty per cent of people entering aged care in 2018-19 in the ACT waited almost a year - or 325 days - before they entered a nursing home.
That's well above the national median of 152 days.
The wait period is the number of days between an older person being approved by the Aged Care Assessment Team to the time they enter a residential aged care facility.
Only 31 per cent of people in the ACT waited less than three months, the report said.
The ACT's median waiting time jumped from 301 days in 2017-18 and from 228 days in 2016-17. Tasmania had the lowest median wait time at 119 days, while 45 per cent of people there waited less than three months.
Longer time periods before entering a home can be because of a lack of availability of places in nursing homes.
It can also be influenced by other factors like personal circumstances, a preference to remain at home for as long as possible, or the need to reject an offer due to cost and location, the report said.
Despite the longer wait times, there were fewer people entering aged care facilities in the ACT in 2018-19 compared to the previous year.
There were 770 admissions into nursing homes in the ACT in 2018-19, compared to 830 in the year before.
The ACT was also the only jurisdiction to record a drop in operational aged care beds in 2019.
According to the figures, there were 2585 operational beds in the ACT as of June 2019, down on 2630 the same time in 2018.
Complaints about Canberra nursing homes more than doubled between 2017-18 to 2018-19.
The ACT had 104 complaints about residential aged care in 2018-19, compared to the 45 complaints in 2017-18.
It meant the ACT had the second highest rate of complaints at 45.2 per 1000 residents, just behind the NT which had 45.6 per 1000 residents.
A low or decreasing rate of complaints can suggest higher quality services, the report said.
But a higher rate of complaints may not necessarily reflect lower quality of services rather more effective complaints reporting, it said.
Across the country, 7828 complaints about aged care services were received.
Residential services accounted for the largest proportion of aged care spending in 2018-19 across Australia at $13.2 billion, or 65.6 per cent. Home care and home support services accounted for much of the remainder at $5.9 billion.
The Australian Government provided 98.2 per cent of the government funding for aged care services in 2018-19. State and Territory governments provided the remainder.
In the ACT, total funding for aged care services rose 15 per cent to 293.8 million.
Funding for residential services accounted for $150 million, while home care services accounted for $110 million.
The figures came after the the Royal Commission into Aged Care's interim report late last year labelled Australia's system a "shocking tale of neglect" which needed a complete overhaul.
The royal commissioners said the system was woefully inadequate and failing.