A growing backlog of older people in hospitals has been the subject of numerous complaints from state governments, who argue their federal counterpart should do more to open up nursing home beds.
Asked how many people are impacted, Health and Aged Care Department secretary Blair Comley said some governments collected information on the issue but more consistency was needed.
"We would not definitively know," he told a parliamentary inquiry on Wednesday.
States claim the lack of aged care spots is forcing them to spend millions of extra dollars to keep people in hospitals.
Commonwealth and state ministers are expected to discuss the issue at a meeting on December 12.
It seemed like the department had its "head in the sand" on the issue, opposition aged care spokeswoman Anne Ruston said in the inquiry hearing.
Government officials also revealed they have been rolling out "interim" home care packages to older Australians who need support, rather than full packages promised by Labor.
These interim packages provide only 60 per cent of the care a person has been assessed as needing and generally run for 10 weeks before the full level of funding kicks in.
Of the people who have been given a home care package since October, 93 per cent are on interim packages, the department said.
The comments follow revelations Australia is facing a larger-than-anticipated shortage of aged care workers because the federal government bungled forecasts of staffing levels.
Despite a series of pay rises, Labor's figures show an extra 35,000 aged care workers are needed this financial year alone, as Australia's population gets older and more people require support.
Nearly 120,000 more staff will be needed by 2035/36 including nurses, nurse practitioners and personal care workers, shows a departmental memo obtained by AAP under freedom of information laws.Â
Over recent years, the government has insisted staff shortages are relatively small, and falling.
Documents from the last two years put the workforce gap at just 6890, but a memo from March 2025 reveals a critical flaw in the government's calculations that led to an underestimate of the shortage.
The error relates to mandatory care minutes, a requirement that aged care residents receive at least 215 minutes of care every day.
The old model assumed once a person had received their mandated 215 minutes, staff could move on to help other residents.
In its updated analysis, the department conceded some older people may need help for a longer period of time.
The memo warned the change in approach created a "significant widening" of the workforce gap.
Aged Care Minister Sam Rae said Labor was making aged care "a fantastic and desirable career choice" by delivering better pay for workers.
"We inherited an aged care sector crippled by a decade of neglect from the former Liberal government: wages that failed to reflect the skill and professionalism of the job of caring for older Australians," he said.
