Care minutes and staffing in aged care homes, explained

What care minutes are

Care minutes are the amount of direct care that people living in an aged care home receive from four kinds of worker:

• registered nurses (RNs), who have a university nursing degree, assess residents, write nursing care plans and give the more complex nursing care
• enrolled nurses (ENs), who have a nursing diploma and work under a registered nurse's supervision
• personal care workers and assistants in nursing, who help with showering, dressing, eating, moving around and other daily living.

Mandatory care minutes were introduced in response to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, which found that staffing levels are vital to the quality of care. They became mandatory on 1 October 2023 at a sector-wide average of 200 minutes per resident per day, including 40 registered nurse minutes. From 1 October 2024 the average rose to 215 minutes, including 44 registered nurse minutes, and that is the figure that applies in 2026.

Not all of this time is face to face. Writing care plans, talking with families about care, and arranging appointments with doctors and other health practitioners also count. Some things never count: cleaning, laundry, preparing and serving meals, gardening, rostering and administration, staff training, group recreation and lifestyle activities, and allied health such as physiotherapy. The time must also be delivered on site (or with the resident on an outing), so on-call and telehealth cover does not count.

Source: Department of Health, Disability and Ageing: care minutes

Why each home has its own targets

The 215 and 44 are averages across the whole country. No home is required to hit exactly 215. Instead, every home has two targets of its own:

• a total care minutes target (all four kinds of worker combined), and
• a registered nurse target, which enrolled nurse time can help meet, up to 10% of the target.

The targets come from the Australian National Aged Care Classification (AN-ACC), the funding model that sorts each resident into a class based on their assessed care needs. Each class carries its own care minutes allocation, and the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing combines the classes of a home's residents to work out that home's targets every quarter. A home caring mostly for people with high needs gets a higher target than one whose residents mostly need less help. The Department's own example is a target of 235 minutes for a high-needs home against 200 minutes for a lower-needs one.

The requirement covers permanent residents and people in residential respite alike. It is measured as an average over the quarter, so on a given day some residents get more care time and others less, depending on their needs.

So "215 minutes" is the wrong yardstick for any one home. A home delivering 220 minutes can still be short if its residents' needs set its target at 235. Always compare a home with its own targets.

Source: Department of Health, Disability and Ageing: care minutes and 24/7 registered nurse requirements, guides for registered providers

The 24/7 registered nurse rule

Separately from care minutes, every aged care home has had to have at least one registered nurse on site and on duty at all times, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, since 1 July 2023. It came from recommendation 86 of the Royal Commission. The Department gives the reasons plainly: a registered nurse on site means someone qualified can spot and deal with risks, residents get better access to clinical care, and fewer people make unnecessary trips to a hospital emergency department.

Note what the rule does and does not say. It is a floor of one registered nurse for the whole home, not one per wing or per floor. In a large home at 3am, one registered nurse may be covering many residents, which is why the questions later in this guide matter.

The rural and remote exemption

A home can apply to the Department for an exemption for up to 12 months at a time. To be eligible it must be in a Modified Monash Model area 5, 6 or 7 (rural and remote areas) and have no more than 30 operational beds. An exempt home must still deliver its registered nurse care minutes, report its nurse coverage every month and have alternative clinical care arrangements for when no registered nurse is on site. It must tell its residents about the exemption, how long it lasts and what those arrangements are. The Department publishes a list of providers with an exemption.

Homes in Melbourne cannot get this exemption, because metropolitan areas are not Modified Monash areas 5 to 7.

Source: Department of Health, Disability and Ageing: 24/7 registered nurses

The Staffing star rating since October 2025

Staffing is one of the four sub-ratings in the Star Ratings published by the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing on My Aged Care, and it makes up 22% of a home's Overall Star Rating. It is worked out from the home's care minutes against its own two targets.

The rating was redesigned from 1 October 2025, and the change shows in ratings published from the May 2026 update onwards. The key rule: a home must meet both its total and its registered nurse targets to get 3 stars or more. A home that misses both gets 1 star, and a home that meets one but not the other gets 2, however far ahead it is on the one it met.

On My Aged Care the five levels are labelled Excellent (5 stars), Good (4), Acceptable (3), Improvement needed (2) and Significant improvement needed (1). Staffing is updated every quarter, from the care minutes each home reports to the Department.

A home can show no Staffing rating at all, for example when it is new, has a new owner, has recently reopened or did not report its data on time. A home without a Staffing rating also has no Overall Star Rating.

For how the other three sub-ratings work, see how Star Ratings work.

Source: Department of Health, Disability and Ageing: how Star Ratings works

How Victorian homes are tracking

We counted how Victorian homes performed against their own targets in the Star Ratings quarterly data extract, August 2026 (Department of Health, Disability and Ageing). The care minutes in that extract are for January to March 2026, the quarter behind the Staffing ratings on My Aged Care as published in August 2026.

What the numbers say:

• About 6 in 10 Victorian homes met both targets. Nationally the figure was 1,726 of 2,505 homes (69%), and Victoria had the lowest share of any state or territory that quarter.
• The total target is the one homes most often miss. 196 Victorian homes met their registered nurse target but not their total target, so personal care time, not nursing time, is the usual gap.
• 47 homes met neither target and so have a 1-star Staffing rating.
• Ownership type matters on average, but not for every home. Government-run homes (114 of the 125 are outside the Melbourne metropolitan regions) met both targets far more often than for-profit homes. There are for-profit homes that meet both targets comfortably and not-for-profit homes that miss them, so judge each home on its own figures.

Source: Department of Health, Disability and Ageing: Star Ratings quarterly data extract, August 2026

How to check a home's staffing yourself

Every home's figures are public, and checking one takes a few minutes.

1. Go to the Find a provider tool on My Aged Care and search for aged care homes near the suburb you want.
2. Open the home's profile and go to its Star Ratings, then the Staffing part.
3. Look at five things: the Staffing rating; total care minutes delivered against the target; registered nurse minutes delivered against the target; the enrolled nurse minutes shown alongside; and the home's 24/7 registered nurse coverage.
4. Note the period the figures cover. My Aged Care updates them about 4 months after the end of each quarter, so in October 2026 you are looking at January to March 2026.
5. For a more recent quarter, the Department publishes home-level care minutes performance as a spreadsheet, generally about 3 months after each quarter ends. The 2025-26 file covers July 2025 to June 2026. It also publishes each home's current care minutes targets.
6. Compare homes on the gap between delivered and target, not on raw minutes. A home 5 minutes over a target of 230 is doing more than a home 10 minutes over a target of 190.
7. Look at more than one quarter if you can. One weak quarter can be a staffing crisis that has since been fixed. Several in a row is a pattern.

Source: My Aged Care: nursing and personal care in aged care homes

Questions to ask a home about staffing

Ask these on the phone or on a tour. A home that is meeting its targets will usually be glad to answer. A home that will not discuss staffing at all is telling you something too.

The numbers

• What are your total and registered nurse care minutes targets this quarter, and what did you deliver last quarter?
• If you missed a target recently, why, and what has changed since?
• How many registered nurses are on site on a weekday morning, at night and on weekends?
• On a morning shift, an evening shift and overnight, how many residents does each personal care worker look after?

Who will actually be caring for Mum or Dad

• How much of your roster is filled by agency staff? Do the same carers usually work with the same residents?
• Is staffing different in the secure (memory support) unit, if there is one?
• Who is the registered nurse responsible for my parent's care plan, and how do I reach them?
• How quickly do you call the family when something changes, such as a fall, an infection or a hospital transfer?

Services that do not count as care minutes

• Who provides physiotherapy, podiatry and lifestyle activities, and how often? These must be provided to residents who need them at no extra cost.

Regional homes

• Do you have an exemption from the 24/7 registered nurse rule? If so, until when, and what happens overnight when no registered nurse is on site?

Visit more than once if you can, at different times, including a weekend or early evening. Notice how long call bells ring, whether residents look clean and comfortable, and how staff speak to people. For a full list to take with you, see the aged care tour checklist.

Source: Department of Health, Disability and Ageing: care minutes in aged care homes (fact sheet for older people, September 2026)

When a home falls short, and how to raise a concern

Care minutes and the 24/7 registered nurse rule are legal obligations on providers under the Aged Care Act 2024, and the strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards (Outcome 2.8) require providers to plan and manage their workforce so they meet them. The Department passes each home's reported data to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, the regulator, which can act on non-compliance.

The Commission's tools include enforceable undertakings (a legally binding plan to fix the shortfall) and Non-Compliance Notices, and a court can impose penalties if an undertaking is not kept. In January 2025, for example, the Commission said enforceable undertakings were in place with 11 providers running 27 homes that had fallen well short of their targets over successive quarters.

Money now follows the minutes in metropolitan homes

From 1 April 2026, part of the care funding for non-specialised homes in metropolitan areas (Modified Monash area 1) is paid as a care minutes supplement. The amount depends on how close the home came to both targets two quarters earlier: care delivered in October to December 2025 set the funding for April to June 2026. A home that delivers less than 85% of both targets gets no supplement, and a home that meets both sees no change to its funding. Regional, rural and remote homes are not affected.

Providers must also lodge a Care Minutes Performance Statement each year, starting with the 2025-26 Aged Care Financial Report, and have it audited by a registered company auditor. The Department also runs its own checks on the care time homes report.

If you are worried about staffing

1. Raise it with the home first, in writing if you can: name the dates, times and what happened.
2. If you think a home's reported care minutes are wrong, email the Department at [email protected].
3. For concerns about care or staffing, contact the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission on 1800 951 822. Complaints can be open, confidential or anonymous.
4. For help speaking up, the Older Persons Advocacy Network (OPAN) offers advocacy at no cost on 1800 700 600.

See advocacy and complaints for the full process.

Source: Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission: 24/7 registered nurse and care minutes obligations