Residents of aged care homes were wrongly charged tens of thousands of dollars because of basic errors with a government-run automated fee calculation system.

One 94-year-old woman was billed $33,000 in government fees last year, before her son realised something was amiss and demanded an investigation.

The son, who asked that his family remains anonymous, said there was no telling how big the problem was.

“When I finally figured out this vague model of what might have been happening, I realised it wasn’t just going to be my mum,” he said. “So you multiply $30,000 by thousands, or maybe more.”

He fears many residents of aged care homes may still not have realised they have been overcharged.

“This is the last phase of someone’s life, when they’re least able to cope with this sort of stuff.”

The problems relate to the means-tested care fee, which is imposed on certain aged care residents to force them to contribute to the cost of their care.



The fee is calculated by the human services department based on a person’s income and assets, but is supposed to be capped at $63,759 for life and $26,566 a year.

Last year the system failed to automatically recognise when aged care residents had reached their cap, and kept imposing fees.

The department confirmed it had experienced problems with the means-tested care fee, and said it had taken steps to have the money refunded.

A spokeswoman said the error occurred only in a “small number of cases”.

“Mid last year, it was identified that in a small number of cases, the department’s systems did not automatically detect when an aged care cap was reached,” she said.

Internal departmental documents clearly showed how the fee was imposed on the 94-year-old woman after she had reached her lifetime cap in January last year.



By the time her son noticed the problem in October, she had been charged $33,000.

The family alerted the company that ran the aged care facility, but its staff had no idea what was happening. It asked the department for advice, but withheld the money from the resident until the problem was identified.

When the government realised its mistake, the refund appeared to have been botched. A series of confused and convoluted charges and refunds were then made.

Even now, the son said his mother has been told she owes $3,282.

The department said last week that it would apologise to the family but on Tuesday the son had not heard from the government.



The spokeswoman said all the identified cases had been “rectified” and the money returned.



“We have advised the aged care recipient, their provider and nominee (where appropriate) in writing of the outcome, and paid providers any additional subsidies they were entitled to,” she said. “Under this scheme, the provider must then pass this subsidy onto the recipient.”

The department has also boosted manual oversight of the system to try to prevent it happening again.



The problems follow on from the so-called “robo debt” scandal last summer, which identified a raft of problems with an automated system designed to claw back overpayments from welfare recipients.



The human services department was scrutinised through a series of inquiries over the failings of that debt recovery system, including by the Senate and the commonwealth ombudsman, and brought in the government’s digital transformation agency and the CSIRO.

The means-tested care fee is imposed on aged care residents only after an assessment of their income and assets. It is typically imposed on wealthier residents in aged care facilities.

The Council on the Ageing’s chief executive, Ian Yates, said the government had notified the sector of problems with the fee in the middle of last year.

He said the government assured the industry it affected only a limited number of people and had been resolved.