The Grattan Institute want to trial a rights based aged care model in Tasmania

The proposal would see Tasmania, and South Australia, used as trial locations for a complete revamp of the aged care sector.

A new system which focuses on providing personalised care plans to aged care residents would take the place of the existing one size fits all model.

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Grattan Institute Health Program director Stephen Duckett said there was a need to capitalise on the momentum of the Aged Care Royal Commission.

He said there was a need to revamp systems to reduce waiting lists and put the rights of people first.

"The current Aged Care Act is basically about controlling spending. As a result of the style of the aged care act it means there is a whole lot of people on waiting lists for home care," Mr Duckett said.

"The whole style of operation needs to change to be much more based on the needs of the older Australian, to be much more orientated to what their aspirations are in terms of being independent and so on.

"What we are saying, as part of the transformation, is we need to work with the older Australia to set up a personal care plan and fund services on the basis of that individual care plan."

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As of June this year more than 155,000 Australians had accessed home care packages. Under the system people are assigned home care package one, two, three or four based on their needs.

As of June 3441 Tasmanians were receiving a home care package, about 2.4 per cent of the total number of Australians receiving packages.

In June more than 61,000 people were on waiting lists to receive a home care package with 1776 Tasmanians on that list.

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In this year's budget the federal government provided $1.6 billion in additional funding to create 23,000 new home care places. However, that will still leave the system about 30,000 places short of meeting demand.

Mr Duckett said Grattan's proposed system would help reduce waiting lists and suggested that Tasmania, and South Australia, would be ideal places to trial the program.

He said the state's were small enough to roll out the new system, but provided a large enough sample size to iron out any kinks before a nationwide roll out.

Council of the Ageing Tasmania chief executive officer Sue Leitch agreed there was a need to shift to a rights-first model of care.

She said while COTA didn't agree with everything proposed by the Grattan Institute, it did agree with Tasmania being a good location to run any potential trial.

The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety is set to hand down its final report in February next year. A special report on the impact of COVID-19 on the sector was released in September.

It recommended, among other things, that the government increase funding to ensure all facilities had enough staff to continue family visits to residential aged care facilities through the pandemic and that mental health services be made available to residents.

Earlier this week Aged Care Minister Richard Colbeck announced the government had accepted all six recommendations of the COVID report.

Ms Leitch said it was important to wait for the final Royal Commission report, but praised Grattan for keeping the conversation going.

"We need to keep the conversation going, we need to allow older people to have their thoughts put through - it is about them and that is a really important consideration," she said.

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