Updates to My Aged Care more “user-friendly”

These changes to the website were based on key feedback on the previous design, launched in 2013, which suggested that it was confusing for senior Australians, their families and carers because there were “too many” content topic options to click on and that the website did not clearly guide them through the journey to access aged care.

As a result, a Spokesperson from the Department of Health says the new design aims to help senior Australians find the information they need when they visit the site.

“Our research has also shown that many senior Australians do not remember the name of the program under which they are receiving care, which made it difficult to know which information was relevant to them,” the Spokesperson says.

“To address this, the updated website includes a coloured ‘pathway’ for each aged care program and encourages people to check which they have been assessed for, orare receiving services from, before reading on.

“The colours of the pathway match the hard copy resources that are handed out by assessors – that is red for Commonwealth Home Support Programme (CHSP), purple for Home Care Packages (HCP), and green for aged care homes.

“This new feature will help direct people to find relevant information on the website by following a specific coloured pathway.”

The Department of Health also states that the website homepage will no longer have prominent links to user tools or program specific content, instead all of the content and topics formerly listed on the homepage will now be available under the relevant step in the aged care pathway.

The new updates to the homepage have been designed predominantly to meet the needs of consumers, however the Department points out that the ‘for service providers’ link has been relocated to the top of each page to make it easier to “find this content in one place”.

“Following the updates, we’re aware of some formatting issues in some browsers and in the mobile format and are working to address these as quickly as possible,” the Department of Health SPokesperson says.

“We will continue to update the My Aged Care website based on feedback we receive, which can be provided at any time.

“If anyone has any questions after visiting the site or would like to register for an aged care assessments, they can call the My Aged Care contact centre on 1800 200 422.