July got off to a bright start with the go-live of the electronic referral and central client record aspects of the My Aged Care (MAC) system, or so it would seem. Some early teething problems became quickly apparent as an underestimation by the Department of Human Services (DHS) of demand for the system caused a backlog of referrals, and a failure to consult GPs on how they'd like to use the system caused an explosion of complaints.

These petered out quickly enough after a month or two but they may have been behind the decision to delay adding aged care assessment teams (ACATs) to the assessor portal until next February. In the meantime, the aged care industry continued to call for a link to be established between the MAC and the PCEHR systems.