Hospital transfers from Australian residential aged care are rising. In April to June 2026, 16.3% of residents had at least one emergency department (ED) presentation or hospital admission, up from 14.2% in the same quarter of 2023. In the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) trend analysis, hospitalisation is the only quality indicator tracking...

How can a multi-site group see which home is behind on care minutes before the quarter closes? Review every home against its own target each week, instead of reviewing the group figure once the quarter has closed. A short routine is enough to start: pull each home’s figures, compare each home against its own target,...

In the January to March 2026 quarter, 1,629 of the 2,560 residential aged care homes that reported care minutes (63.63%) met both their total care minutes and registered nurse (RN) care minutes targets. The other 931 missed at least one. For a multi-site group, each of those results belongs to a single home, measured against...

What is a Higher Everyday Living Fee?  A Higher Everyday Living Fee, or HELF, is a charge a residential aged care home can offer residents for services that go beyond the standard offer every resident already receives. It replaced the old Extra Service and Additional Service fees when the Aged Care Act 2024 commenced on 1 November 2025. Offering...

For most of the last decade, residential aged care providers had two ways to earn revenue above the Government’s care and accommodation funding: the Extra Service Fee, for homes with a formally approved higher-standard offering, and the Additional Service Fee, for the optional extras residents could choose to pay for. Both were imperfect, but both...

85.7% of residents rated their consumer experience good or excellent in the October to December 2025 quarter, according to GEN Aged Care Data. That figure is not a single measurement. It is six separately scored attributes of care quality, banded together into one aggregate number before it reaches a board pack, which means two providers...

A residential aged care provider’s Star Ratings page shows four or five stars for Compliance. A board member checks it before a quarterly meeting and moves on to the next agenda item, satisfied that governance is in hand. Across the sector, that satisfaction is common. Whether it is warranted depends on a detail the published rating does not disclose.  The Aged Care...

Pressure injury documentation in Australian residential aged care follows a familiar pattern. The skin integrity assessment is completed and entered. The wound management form is initiated. The repositioning schedule is added as a care plan action. All three entries exist. All three are thorough. Under routine clinical governance, that is usually where the conversation stops.  It stops in...