[Opening visual of slide with text saying ‘Australian Government with Crest (logo)’, ‘Department of Health and Aged Care’, ‘Changes to care minutes funding and residential aged care financial reporting webinar’, ‘1 May 2025’, ‘agedcareengagement.health.gov.au’]
[The visuals during this webinar are of each speaker presenting in turn via video, with reference to the content of a PowerPoint presentation being played on screen]
Mark Richardson:
Thank you all for attending today’s webinar. I’m Mark Richardson, Assistant Secretary of the Residential Care and Hotelling Reform Branch from the Department of Health and Aged Care.
I’d like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the lands on which we meet today. I am based in Canberra on the lands of the Ngunnawal people. I’d like to acknowledge and pay respect to their Elders past, present and emerging. I would also like to extend that acknowledgment and respect to any other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people who are here with us today.
Our presenters today are penny Philbrick, Director, Care Minutes and 24/7 Registered Nurse Policy, Aden Pulford, Director, Funding Risk Policy, and Samantha Ebdon, Director, Financial Reporting Operations. So you’re aware this session is being recorded and will be published on our website in the coming days. Also the webinar slides are now available on our website if you would like to follow along at your own pace.
Unfortunately we are unable to answer live questions today given that we are in caretaker due to the Federal election. However at the end of today’s webinar we will answer some of the most popular pre-submitted questions and we’ll publish answers to all questions in our FAQ document that we’ll publish on our website. If you have further questions you want answered you can submit them through the Slido function on the right hand side of your screen.
There are three items that we are looking to cover in today’s webinar. First Penny will take us through changes to care funding to ensure that funding goes to delivery of care. Second Aden will outline the Care Minutes Performance Statement which will need to be externally audited. This will be introduced in the Aged Care Financial Report otherwise referred to as the ACFR 25-26 and will support assessing care minutes to make sure that providers are paid correctly. Third, Sam will provide a high level overview of upcoming changes to the ACFR 24-25 and 25-26 and the Quarterly Financial Report, otherwise referred to as the QFR 25-26. Some of these changes are being introduced to support the introduction of the new Aged Care Act. Others are being made in line with changes to policy. We are providing you with advanced notice of these changes so that you can make the necessary adjustments to support reporting.
I’ll now hand over to Penny to take us through the first item.
Penny Philbrick:
[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Update to care minutes funding’, ‘Penny Philbrick’, ‘Director’, ‘Care minutes and 24/7 policy section’]
Thanks Mark. In December 2024 the Government announced that it will link funding to care minutes delivery for non-specialised services operating in metropolitan areas. By metropolitan I mean homes with a Modified Monash or MM1 classification. The Government made this decision because reporting since care minutes became mandatory in October 2023 shows a significant proportion of homes across the sector are still not meeting their minutes targets. This is despite the Government funding minutes since October 2022 and care funding for the sector now being around 59% higher than it was in September 2022, largely to fund care minutes and support higher wages.
The key reason the funding policy change will only apply to services in metropolitan areas is because while compliance rates are low across much of the sector it is even lower for services in these areas. This is despite feedback that workforce shortages are most acute in rural and remote areas. At the time the Government made this policy decision the Department’s analysis of reporting for Q4 of 2023-24, that is the June quarter of 2024, showed only around 38% of all MM1 services met both their care minutes targets compared to 41% of services across the sector. This analysis also found that compliance rates of aged care homes run by for profit providers were much lower than those run by not for profits.
Reporting since then continues to show overall compliance being relatively low. The latest published data for the December quarter of 2025 shows that only 23% of MM1 services met their targets. We note however that this was the first quarter following the increase to 215 care minutes and 44 RN minutes. So this policy aims to lift care minute compliance to ensure the Government’s substantial investment in aged care leads to more care for residents ensuring their personal and clinical care needs are met. It also aims to ensure that Government is not paying for additional care minutes that are not being delivered to ensure that funding for the residential aged care sector remains sustainable now and into the future.
This slide provides some key information about the new care minutes funding policy. First there will not be any AN-ACC funding changes to MM1 services with specialised homeless status and those operating in MM2 to 7 areas. This policy also does not apply to multipurpose services or MPSs and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Flexible Aged Care Program services or NATSIFAC services. There also won’t be any changes to funding for the delivery of required allied health and lifestyle services. The Government will continue to fund these services in full through the AN-ACC and providers must ensure they continue to provide these services consistent with their obligations under the legislation.
Under this new policy the Government will reduce the amount of BCT funding for non‑specialised services in MM1 areas by 0.113 national weighted activity units known as NWAU from April 2026 on an ongoing basis. This is equivalent to $31.92 per bed day based on the current AN-ACC price of $282.44. The equivalent amount of BCT funding reduction will be redirected into a new care minutes supplement which will start to flow at the same time. The maximum amount of supplement payable will be equivalent to the reduction in BCT funding. The amount of supplement providers get will depend on their actual care minute performance for the December 2025 quarter onwards. Put simply providers that meet their care minute targets will not see any change in the overall level of funding they receive. However those that deliver below 85% of both their targets will not get any supplement at all and will effectively see a funding reduction of $31.92 per bed day.
This slide illustrates the timeline for this policy change as I know many of you are keen to understand how this will impact funding in a practical sense. I want to make it clear before I get to the how that this policy change will not impact on the calculation or delivery of your care minute targets for the December 2025 quarter or any quarter thereafter. In practice providers will continue to receive AN-ACC funding in full until March 2026 and will only begin to see funding changes from April 2026.
This is to align with the availability of care minute performance data from the QFR which is due on the 14th of February 2026 and validated by late March for the December quarter of 2025 following the commencement of this policy. Services Australia will use the available information to calculate and automatically pay the relevant amount of supplement payable each month for the relevant quarter. On this slide you can see that the first monthly payment will be made in April 2026 following the commencement of this new policy with the second in May followed by the third in June. The per resident per day amount of the supplement will be the same across these three months. Subsequent payments for the following three months, that is July to September, will be based on performance from the January to March quarter and so on thereafter.
This slide shows a table containing the NWAU values for the supplement based on total and RN care minutes compliance. These are multiplied by the AN-ACC price to get the dollar amount for the supplement which we’ll show you in the next slide. As you can see funding will be on a sliding scale based on how providers perform against their total care minutes and RN care minutes targets as measured by the percentage of homes’ targets delivered during the quarter. The specific rates for each funding category are set on average to fund providers to deliver a 2.5 percentage point increase in their care minute compliance. For example a service that is delivering between 87.5% to 97% of their minutes would be funded to deliver 90% to 92.5% of their targets.
The maximum rate will only be provided if a home meets 100% or more for both targets. For clarity the percentage of RN care minutes delivered will include care time from ENs of up to 10% of your target in line with the legal responsibility. Providers that do not meet either one or both of their targets will see a reduction in their AN-ACC funding and those whose performance falls below 85% for both targets will not get back any of the funding removed from the BCT.
To help put this in perspective this slide shows the supplement rates which are derived by multiplying the relevant NWAU seen on the previous slide by the current AN-ACC price. Based on the current price of $282.44 the maximum rate will be $31.92 per bed day as I mentioned earlier. However it’s important to note that the supplement rates seen here and in other resources published by the Department are indicative only and are solely intended to put a dollar value on the NWAU funding categories to help explain this policy. The actual amount of supplement payable will always be underpinned by the NWAUs for each payment category and the AN-ACC price that is applicable at the time this policy starts. Noting that the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority or IHACPA will be providing their annual advice to Government to inform the price from 1 October 2025.
We also have a payment category for new and transferred services. The payment rate will be set at the maximum rate until the care minutes performance for these services can be assessed.
The rates for the care minutes supplement will be reviewed regularly to ensure they are incentivising the delivery of care minutes across the sector.
Now we’ve been asked if there is a funding tolerance built into the supplement. I think we need to change. No. We’re on the right slide. Sorry. Now we’ve been asked if there is a funding tolerance built into the supplement for those that are close to full compliance for example above 97.5%. Fully funding providers for meeting 97.5% of their care minutes targets creates the risk that some providers would not aim to deliver their targets in full. This would be inconsistent with the intent of this policy change which is to financially incentivise providers to meet their targets. You will recall the long history of care minutes implementation starting in 2022 with care minutes being funded but not mandatory then in 2023 becoming mandatory. In effect this has been a three year implementation timeframe for the sector with full funding as if targets were being met from day one. However the design of the care minutes supplement does recognise the efforts of providers who are close to meeting their targets and this is reflected in the rates table where the reduction in funding per resident per day is relatively small. As can be seen on this slide a reduction of 2.5 percentage points from 100% compliance to 97.5% for both targets is only a $2.26 per resident per day funding reduction.
Importantly the reduction in funding of $2.26 per resident per day for falling just short on both targets is only an 0.75% reduction in total care funding based on average care funding of $301 per resident per day in metropolitan areas.
To further help put this policy in perspective we have an example here where George’s Residential Aged Care Group runs three aged care homes in New South Wales.
Home B and Home C will not be impacted by the funding changes because Home B is a specialised homeless service even though it’s located in MM1 and Home C is not located in an MM1 area. The BCT funding component for Home A will reduce by 0.113 NWAU per resident per day from April 2026 because this is in MM1 and does not have specialised homeless status. Home A has a target of 210 minutes per resident per day for the October to December quarter of 2025. This includes an RN specific target of 42 minutes per resident per day. At the end of the quarter the provider reported its labour costs and hours for this service on the relevant categories of the QFR as usual. The Department worked out that Home A delivered an average of 215 total care minutes per resident per day including an average of 42 care minutes during the quarter.
As the reported care minutes indicates Home A met 102.38% of its total care minute target and 100% of its RN care minute target this home will receive the full supplement of $31.92 per resident per day. Overall the funding for Home A will remain unchanged because the provider met both its targets.
You may be aware we’ve published an online care minutes supplement estimator to help you estimate how much care minute supplement you could receive from April 2026 onwards. It’s a fairly basic tool which allows you to enter numbers to help you get an idea of how this policy will impact your funding. For example you can enter an assumed AN-ACC price and what your expected target will be and performance against those targets based on your staffing levels to get an estimate of the supplement for various scenarios. I encourage you to take a look at this tool if you haven’t already. You can find this by searching care minute funding calculator on the Department’s website or scan the QR code that you see on this slide.
This part of the webinar has been re-recorded following the live event to clarify some confusion about the definition of personal care workers, or PCW’s for the purposes of care minutes, and whether social and emotional support can be counted in care minutes. The slide seen here and the next slide have also been revised. To be clear, when I say PCW, I also mean assistance in nursing, but for brevity I'll just say PCW. The PCW definition was updated from 1 January 2025 to reflect changes to the Aged Care Award, and to more clearly distinguish PCW’s from other workers, such as lifestyle workers. This is intended to ensure that care minutes leads to additional care time for residents, rather than the substitution of other workers such as lifestyle workers, effectively meaning that providers could meet their minutes without actually increasing their staffing. This change was communicated to the sector late last year through a newsletter article, before the change came into effect on 1st January. Under the updated definition, a PCW is considered a person employed under the direct care categories on the award or an equivalent enterprise agreement whose primary responsibility is to provide personal care services to residents under the supervision of an RN or EN.
When I say primary responsibility, I mean the employee must, as part of their ordinary duties spend the majority of their time in their role dedicated to the provision of personal care services. I want to highlight that personal care services is not the full set of direct care activities that can be counted as care minutes. It's things like the provision of activities of daily living supports, hygiene support and assistance with the provision of medical treatments. This ensures lifestyle workers cannot be classified as personal care workers, in line with the intent of the policy and the Royal Commission's recommendations. And for the purpose of the definition of a PCW only, one on one social and emotional support is not considered a personal care service. To be clear, one on one social and emotional support has not been removed as a direct care activity, it remains a vital part of care given to residents and will continue to count towards care minutes. However, this activity can only be included in care minutes if it is delivered by a staff member who meets the definition of a PCW, or who are employed as RN's or EN’s. So what this means is that if an employee meets the definition of a PCW, meaning that more than 50% of their role involves personal care service delivery, the time they spend providing social and emotional support can count towards care minutes. This is in addition to the time they spend providing personal care services.
To give an example, Melanie is employed in a direct care classification in the aged care award. She meets the definition of a PCW because 80% of her role involves doing personal care tasks, such as assisting with eating and drinking, and assisting residents with bathing and personal hygiene. She spends the other 20% of her time providing social and emotional support activities. In this example, Melanie meets the definition of a PCW because her primary responsibility is to directly provide personal care services to residents under the direction of an RN or EN.
This allows the provider to count the 80% of her time that was spent with residents attending to their needs, as well as the other 20% providing one on one social and emotional support towards care minutes. That is, 100% of Melanie's time is considered direct care. On the other hand, the example on the right hand side of this slide shows that while Paul is also employed as a direct care employee under the award. He is not considered a personal care worker because he only spends 10% of his time providing personal care services. As Paul does not meet the definition of a personal care worker, he cannot have any of his time count towards care minutes including the 10% of his time he spent providing one on one social and emotional support. In summary, an employee must first be established as a PCW that is, they are employed in a direct care classification in the aged care award, and they spend the majority of their time providing personal care services under the supervision of an RN or EN, before any of their time can be counted towards care minutes. I hope this re-recording provides sufficient clarification regarding the PCW definition and how it interacts with one on one social and emotional support activities, and apologies for any confusion caused during the live webinar. The next part of this recording will focus on the care minute performance statement.
Aden Pulford:
[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Care Minutes Performance Statement’, ‘Aden Pulford’, ‘Director’, ‘Funding Risk Policy’]
Good afternoon everyone. I am Aden Pulford, Director of Funding Risk Policy for the Residential Risk and Funding Operations Branch. Now that you have an understanding of the funding changes and how they will be applied I will be taking you through the new Care Minutes Performance Statement and external audit requirements for residential aged care providers.
To assist the Department in assessing performance against the care minute responsibility and to make sure you are paid correctly we are updating providers’ reporting responsibilities. These updates include the need to complete a Care Minutes Performance Statement and an annual external audit of the Care Minutes Performance Statement which must be completed under the assurance standard ASAE 3000. With the introduction of the care minutes supplement provider reporting will impact payments. As such the Department needs assurance over the reporting to make sure payments are accurate. The Care Minutes Performance Statement will cover the whole 2025-2026 financial year and will be an annual ongoing requirement. This performance statement will include all services that you have operated for each quarter of the financial year. The Care Minutes Performance Statement will be used to make sure the care minutes reported through the Quarterly Financial Reports are accurate and correct.
Support will be available to assist you in understanding your reporting responsibilities. The Department is developing new guidelines outlining how to complete the Care Minutes Performance Statement and how to conduct the audit. It will be important to follow the guidelines carefully as misreporting can lead to inaccurate payments.
You will be given the opportunity to provide feedback on the statement before the form is finalised. We will also be engaging further with providers and peak bodies before the form is finalised.
The Care Minutes Performance Statement is entirely comprised of information previously reported in the Quarterly Financial Report or the 24/7 Registered Nurse Report. By pulling this information into one report providers will be able to obtain just one audit opinion that covers the full report decreasing audit fees and improving the efficiency of the audit. As a result the number of care time reporting assessments will also decrease reducing the burden on providers.
As you can see on the slide the Care Minutes Performance Statement requires providers to consolidate their care minute and 24/7 RN reporting for the year into one spot so their auditor can issue just one audit opinion. Fundamentally all of the information in the performance statement is reported elsewhere. As such it’s important to complete those original reports, the QFR and the 24/7 RN reports accurately as this will facilitate completing this report as efficiently as possible. We will now walk through each section of the statement to give you early visibility so that you can start getting ready before the reporting period commences.
The care minute responsibility forms the first section of the report. There are two parts to this section. Direct care labour costs and direct care labour hours. You will need to add the total costs and hours per quarter for direct care from registered nurses, enrolled nurses and PCWs including assistants in nursing. This is all in line with the existing QFR reporting requirements and definitions. To make section one easier you can use the previously prepared reporting from your QFRs. Please only use this information if the previous reporting was accurate and only include the fields related to the care minute responsibilities rather than the whole report. Your auditor will then work with you to make sure this information is accurate. If the QFRs are completed correctly you are unlikely to have any issues with this section.
The 24/7 registered nurse responsibility is the second section of the form. In this section of the report you will need to report RN coverage for each month of the year to ensure your performance against the 24/7 RN responsibility has been reported accurately. This report requires you to provide the same information submitted via the 24/7 RN report. We encourage you to use those prior reports and the 24/7 RN coverage tool on the Department’s website to assist you in completing this section. The percentages you report can be calculated directly from the monthly RN reports. If this report has not been completed accurately in the past it will take more time to calculate. You should report RN coverage in this form not absences. As a reminder the minimum reportable gap is 30 minutes. The Department does not expect a 15 minute paid break to be disclosed.
One example of a reportable gap is if the only RN on shift takes their 30 minute lunch break off site and there is no RN coverage for that period. It is important to report the percentage of RN coverage accurately to make sure you receive the correct payment of your RN supplement. For example if there are 600 minutes of uncovered time in the month of July this is the equivalent of 98.66% of covered time in July by an RN. That percentage is what you would be including in this form.
The third section of the report is bed days. The data in this section should be in line with the Services Australia reports that are available to you as providers. We ask that you please report these occupied bed days in line with existing rules. And this section is purely included to support the next stage where you are provided with summary ratios to help you sense check the reporting you’re submitting.
The fourth and final section of the statement is the direct care minutes worked per occupied bed day. These are the raw ratios of staff to bed days being calculated to help you check the accuracy of your report. They do not account for the adjustments made by the Department automatically. In particular while some EN time counts towards your performance against the RN minute targets the Department calculates this. So please do not attempt to do this yourself. The ratios calculated in this section will not reflect this adjustment.
To comply with the new guidelines residential aged care providers will be required to engage an external auditor. It is likely that your existing auditor who audits your financial statements and does your annual prudential compliance statement will be able to perform the audit under ASAE 3000 standards. In doing so engaging your existing auditor may be more efficient and cost effective than engaging a separate auditor. Have a conversation with your auditor as early as possible to understand the scope of services being provided. Audit fees vary greatly across the aged care sector so you may want to get quotes from other vendors to get the best price available while meeting your responsibilities. The ASAE 3000 standards that the auditor needs to comply with are issued by the Auditing and Assurance Standards Board. This standard refers to non-financial assurance engagements. It is separate to the audit that is already completed over your annual financial statement and annual prudential compliance statement.
The Department will publish guidance materials and template audit reports so that the auditors will be supported in completing these engagements.
To support you with the upcoming changes new guidelines will be available to give you clear instructions on how to accurately and correctly complete the Care Minutes Performance Statement. The guidelines will be made available to providers in the coming months.
You can take the following steps to prepare for the new auditing requirements. You can find an external auditor who has experience and quality assurance processes in place to deliver an audit to the ASAE 3000 standard. You can talk with your auditor early about what information they will need from you to complete the audit. You can stay up to date with your regular reporting responsibilities including the preparation of your Care Minutes Performance Statement. You can ensure the accuracy and completeness of your records and data. Make sure key records are available and stored appropriately. Complete monthly reviews to maintain quality of reporting. Organise data so it is easy to retrieve specific information. Implement reliable systems for capturing all relevant data. Use digital tools and technology where possible to reduce errors. And provide regular training to the staff preparing your reporting to make sure they understand the underlying responsibilities. Taking these steps can make sure timely and accurate records are provided to the auditor and can help minimise potential misreporting.
In a previous webinar I talked through some of the common reporting errors that we see. Take care when completing your QFRs and Care Minutes Performance Statements to avoid making these errors. The first error we commonly see is with staff categorisation where hours are mapped to incorrect QFR categories. Penny discussed this earlier with respect to personal care workers. Other areas we commonly see include staff allocation where there is misreporting of the allocation of direct and non-direct care activities for hybrid staff, shift measurements using incorrect reporting periods such as pay cycles or including legal training as direct care hours, unreported absences where there are gaps in RN coverage that are disclosed, and offsite staff reporting direct care hours for the offsite staff, and direct care hours of agency staff not being appropriately recorded and reported.
In terms of timing the Care Minutes Performance Statement will be due with the Aged Care Financial Report for the 2025-2026 financial year. As described by Penny earlier the new funding model will commence from April 2026 and the legislated Quarterly Financial Reporting will continue in line with the dates listed on the slide.
Thank you for your time today. If you have any questions or wish to provide feedback on the Care Minutes Performance Statement reach out using the email on the slide. I would now like to hand over to Sam to speak about the other changes to the ACFR and QFR that are on the horizon.
Jess Evans:
[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Upcoming changes to financial reporting’, ‘Samantha Ebdon’, ‘Director’, ‘Financial Reporting Operations’]
Good afternoon everyone. I’m Jessica Evans, Assistant Secretary for Market Intelligence Branch. Sam has unexpectedly had to step out but nevertheless I am pleased to be here today to brief you on some of the changes that are on the horizon both for the Aged Care Financial Report and the Quarterly Financial Report in the coming financial years.
This information today is specific to residential aged care providers. We will deliver a targeted webinar specific to home care providers in the coming months. I’ll highlight these changes chronologically but it’s important to note the timing of the new Aged Care Act and when the transition will occur to a registered provider model. The Aged Care Financial Report for 24-25 will be completed by providers under the approved provider structure. The first report providers will complete under the registered provider structure will be the QFR for Quarter 1 in October this year. The ACFR for 25-26 will also be reported under the registered provider structure.
The Department is also undertaking a review of financial reporting and there will be some additional changes introduced in upcoming cycles. This review is anticipated to be finished in July this year and we’ll communicate any additional changes to financial reporting as soon as possible in the new financial year.
Okay. If we start with the 24-25 ACFR there are some changes that residential aged care providers should be aware of. Firstly there is no longer a requirement to report COVID-19 income and expenses. Instead the other resident services line item has been renamed to other care consumables and has an updated definition to capture costs related to purchasing of PPE and expenses related to outbreaks. In addition the liquidity and capital adequacy ratios have been removed ahead of the introduction of the new financial and prudential standards which will come into effect from July this year. Providers should instead use the liquidity calculator that has been developed by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission.
There are two new data items under the direct care expenses to capture costs related to staff housing. This has been split to capture agency and non-agency staff. The survey of aged care homes has been updated to align with the maximum room price without IHACPA’s approval and a number of definitions have been updated. Specifically providers should now include staff training in their reporting of costs under residential expenses but note staff training should continue to be excluded from reporting of hours.
The template for the 24-25 ACFR is now online so you’ll be able to see the detail of everything I’ve discussed in that template and the portal will be launched from July 2025. A reminder when you’re completing the ACFR for 24-25 this is the last year that providers will be able to report the amortisation and impairment expenses for bed licences before residential places becoming assigned directly to residents with the introduction of the new Aged Care Act. So where applicable please reduce the closing net carrying amount of bed licences to $0 in the 24-25 ACFR.
Moving on to the Quarter 1 QFR for 25-26 which will be completed in October this year, there will be further changes in line with the introduction of the new Aged Care Act. This will include new terminology and a new declaration file. Similar to the ACFR the liquidity and capital adequacy calculator will be removed and all of the definitions will be updated as per the new Act. There will be some changes to how bed licences and bed days are reported as a result of the places to people policy changes. Bed licence depreciation and intangible assets and approved places data items will both be removed. Available bed days will be renamed to operational bed days with an updated definition provided.
The template for the QFR for Quarter 1 of 25-26 will be available in coming months and it will be the first report completed on the Department’s new look GPMS system. Updated guidance to support logging in and completing your QFR will be provided in coming months.
Finally we shift our attention to the ACFR for 25-26. There will be changes to the language throughout this ACFR and to the declaration file in line with the new Aged Care Act. The annual prudential standards will be updated in line with legislation and the same changes that have been made to the QFR with regards to bed licences and bed days will be made to the ACFR also. The Care Time Performance Statement which Aden has spoken about in detail will be introduced and there will be updates to the survey of aged care homes in line with recommendations from the Aged Care Taskforce. Specifically these changes apply to the information collected about refundable deposit payments.
In addition to definition changes there will be some other items added to the ACFR for 25-26. In the expenses tab providers will see new line items. These items will support pricing and include staff housing costs separated by agency and non-agency staff. Some changes have also been made to the income tab based on Government’s response to the Taskforce recommendations. These include renaming resident fees, means tested care fee to resident fee care fee, adding two new line items under hotelling services income for contribution to hotelling supplement and higher everyday living fee. A new line item has been added to the accommodation income category to reflect residential accommodation deposit retention deductions. We are working to release the 25-26 templates and guidance during the first quarter of the upcoming financial year and communications will be distributed to providers once this has been published. Thanks. Over to you Mark.
Mark Richardson:
[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Q&A’, ‘?’, ‘1 May 2025’]
Thanks Jess. And look thank you so much for stepping in. That’s very good of you. That completes the presentations today and we’ll now go through the pre-submitted questions. And also thank you Penny and Aden for taking us through all of that. Penny the first two set of questions that we have are in your area, and they go to care minutes. The first question is:
Q: Direct care staff training hours, does that count towards care minutes?
Aden Pulford:
Penny I don’t think you’ve come off mute.
Penny Philbrick:
Thank you Aden. No. You can’t count the training hours. Only direct care can be counted. So you can’t count training time, leave or unpaid breaks.
Mark Richardson:
Fantastic. And also the second question Penny.
Q: How much EN time can be included in care minutes? And if the manager is a nurse does that time count?
Penny Philbrick:
Okay. So all direct care time delivered by endorsed enrolled nurses like regular enrolled nurses can be counted towards care minutes. In addition up to 10% of RN targets can be met by ENs. Just a reminder though as Aden mentioned you must continue to report all EN time in the EN category of the QFR, even the EN time that counts towards the RN targets. The Department’s system then does the calculation to allocate EN time to RN targets.
Then for the other part of the question, if a staff member is a qualified RN or EN including EENs, endorsed enrolled nurses, and is primary employed in a managerial role, then only the time they spend providing direct care can be attributed to either the RN or EN care time categories in the QFR.
Mark Richardson:
Great. Thanks Penny. We’ve now got three questions for yourself Aden. The first one is:
Q: Will audits be announced and are they at provider level or service level?
Aden Pulford:
Sure. So in terms of if they’re announced these audits are not a regulatory activity where the Department is going to reach out to ask for documents. As we’ve walked through earlier these audits are an obligation on providers similar to their annual prudential compliance statement where this is an arrangement you have with your external auditor. And so as such they’ll happen in line with how your organisation arranges them at the time you schedule with your auditor after the period is over.
As for if they are provider or service level, the audits will be conducted at a provider level with regard to service level information. So you’ll report the care minutes for each of your services in one provider level Care Minutes Performance Statement and then that Care Minutes Performance Statement is what is being audited.
Mark Richardson:
Great. Thanks Aden. And look the second question.
Q: How will the fees for the external audit be covered?
Aden Pulford:
The costs of these audits will be covered in the same manner as the cost of your annual financial statement audit or annual prudential compliance statement with IHACPA paying regard to these costs in preparing their pricing advice.
Mark Richardson:
Great. Thanks again Aden. The third and last question for you.
Q: Please define external assurance opinion over care time reporting, commencing aged care financial report 25-26 and the frequency in which this opinion is needed to obtain for providers.
Aden Pulford:
Sure. So the external assurance opinion we’re requiring is an ASAE 3000 opinion prepared to a reasonable assurance standard over the new Care Minutes Performance Statement. The performance statement is prepared annually but includes information broken down by quarter and month with respect to the RN responsibility. Without the new performance statement you would need to have your QFRs audited which would make it a quarterly audit instead. So we understand the concern. But by creating the new Care Minutes Performance Statement we can reduce the frequency down to annual and further the auditors will be able to use the work they’ve done over payroll as part of their financial statement audit to cut down on the work they do here making it even cheaper.
Mark Richardson:
Great. Thanks Aden. Jess look we now have a question here for you.
Q: Are there further ACFR QFR reporting changes planned in the near future, and if so what is their likely nature and extent?
Jess Evans:
Thanks Mark. As mentioned during my session the Department is undertaking a comprehensive review of financial reporting arrangements and we are expecting that changes will come out of this review and they will be introduced in the 26-27 financial reporting year. Our position is that we continue to assess the QFR and the ACFR to make sure that they align with pricing requirements, regulatory requirements and policy requirements. And we’re both seeking to ensure that alignment but also streamline reporting requirements where possible. The review is expected to be finalised later this year and we will communicate further changes to the financial reporting ahead of that cycle commencing. So there will be no further changes announced to 24‑25 ACFR or for the Quarterly Financial Reporting over the next financial year but the review will likely result in some changes for 26-27 and beyond.
Mark Richardson:
Great. Thanks Jess. That was great. Penny look we have a couple more questions for you. These ones though are on the new care minutes supplement that you just spoke about. The first question is:
Q: If you reach your total care minutes overall but fail to reach your RN minutes will there still be a cut in your AN-ACC funding?
Penny Philbrick:
Thanks Mark. Yeah there will still be a reduction in funding if the targets for both total care minutes and RN minutes are not met. The amount of the reduction will depend on the shortfall in RN minutes. However as I mentioned during my presentation a shortfall of 2.5 percentage points from 100% will only result in a small reduction in funding. For example if you meet 95% of your RN target and 100% of your total care minutes the reduction will be 57 cents per resident per day.
Mark Richardson:
Great. Thanks Penny. And look the last question.
Q: Won’t the reporting timeframes for the supplement mean that some providers will have their funding reduced after they have hit 100% compliance?
Penny Philbrick:
Thanks Mark. Yes. This is possible. The reporting timeframes mean that the funding impacts of not meeting care minutes will be delayed. For example for the December 2025 quarter the reporting deadline for the QFR is the 14th of December 2026. This data is then validated and finalised around the end of March 2026. And then care minutes supplement funding for April, May and June of 2026 will be based on this validated data. This means it’s possible for a home that’s non-compliant in December 2025, in the December 2025 quarter, to return to compliance in the March quarter and then in April they’ll see a reduction in their funding. In this instance the home would be expected to save the funding from undelivered care minutes from the December 2025 quarter to ensure that they can continue to meet care minutes from April to June 2026.
The only alternative to this delay in the impacts while linking funding to care minutes would have been to require providers to report their care time monthly and this was ruled out as an option at this time given the additional reporting burden that this might impose on providers. It’s something we could look at in the future once Business to Government systems are fully developed and adopted across the sector.
Mark Richardson:
Great. Thanks Penny. And also thank you Jess and thank you Aden. Before we finish on this slide are some useful links to help you contact us with any questions or concerns that you may have. We’ve covered a lot of content today so I want to thank you for bearing with us. When the webinar finishes a short survey will pop up on your browser. It takes about one minute to answer the three questions. We’d really appreciate it if you could take a moment to help us improve our webinars.
[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Contact us’, ‘For questions about financial reporting, email ACFRQFRQueries@Health.gov.au’, ‘Contact Forms Administration for ACFR assistance on (02) 4403 0640 or email on health@formsadministration.com.au’, ‘For assistance with QFR Labour Hours and Costs, email QFRACFRHelp@health.gov.au’, ‘For questions about care minutes funding changes: ANACCOperations@Health.gov.au’]
That concludes our presentation today. Please note that a recording of this webinar will be available over the following days. Thank you for your attendance and I hope you have a great day. Bye bye.
[Closing visual of slide with text saying ‘Australian Government with Crest (logo)’, ‘Department of Health and Aged Care’, ‘Thank you for attending’, ‘agedcareengagement.health.gov.au’, ‘1 May 2025’]
[End of Transcript]