The ICIDH was developed to assess the consequences of disease and classify them as impairments, disabilities and handicaps. By developing a standard classification system it provides a common conceptual framework and terminology for specialists in diverse health care areas. Disability measures collated nationally across the Australian Government aged care system are plagued by some of the problems that the ICIDH was designed to address. This paper considers the aged care data collections in the context of the ICIDH system and shows that measurement of disability in national aged care data could benefit from such a classification system.