Your questions answered

Star Ratings helps you research and compare residential aged care homes. Each home has an Overall Star Rating and ratings in 4 sub-categories: Residents’ Experience, Compliance, Staffing and Quality Measures.

Star Ratings help you, your family or carers compare the quality of care, safety and services of aged care homes and choose the care that is right for you.

You can find Star Ratings through the My Aged Care ‘Find a provider’ tool.

You can:

• filter aged care homes by Overall Star Rating or by specific sub-category ratings 
• search and compare up to 3 homes at once by what’s important to you – for example, location, cost, type of care, speciality and culture.

If you already live in aged care, you can ask the staff about your home’s Star Ratings. They can tell you what they are doing well and what they are doing to improve.

Aged care homes get an Overall Star Rating from 1 to 5 stars. 

More stars mean a home provides higher quality care across the 4 sub-categories:

• 5 stars = an excellent quality of care
• 4 stars = a good quality of care
• 3 stars = an acceptable quality of care
• 2 stars = improvement needed
• 1 star = significant improvement needed.

Aged care homes get a rating between 1 and 5 stars across 4 sub-categories:

• Residents' Experience – how people feel about the care they are receiving – we survey around 20% of all residents every year about their overall experiences at their home.
• Compliance – how well the home is meeting is obligations to provide safe, quality care and services.
• Staffing – the average amount of care time residents get from nurses and care workers; we compare this with the minimum average care targets the Australian Government sets.
• Quality Measures – looks at 5 areas of care that are important indicators of care quality, like falls and major injury, unplanned weight loss, pressure injuries, medication management and the use of restrictive practices.

These sub-categories make up an Overall Star Rating:

• 33% is the Residents’ Experience rating
• 30% is the Compliance rating
• 22% is the Staffing rating
• 15% is the Quality Measures rating.

An aged care home must have ratings for all 4 sub-categories to have an Overall Star Rating.

We don’t show Overall Star Ratings for new homes or homes with new owners for the first 12 months.

This allows enough time for:

• the home to collect and provide the information we use to work out the ratings
• us to survey residents about their experience
• the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission to assess the home.

An aged care home might not have a sub-category rating because it:

• is new
• has new owners
• has reopened after major repairs or renovations
• is having technical issues
• is temporarily exempt from ratings due to serious health or weather issues.

You should contact the provider to find out more about homes that are missing a rating.

It takes about 3 to 5 months for providers’ self-reported data and the survey data to show in the Star Ratings. 

This gives us time to assess and validate the data. It also gives providers time to:

• fix errors or gaps in the data
• receive and review Residents’ Experience Reports after the survey.

Compliance rating

We update Compliance ratings:

• every day in response to formal regulatory decisions 
• every week in response to changes in accreditation decisions. 

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission makes formal regulatory and accreditation decisions based on how well a home is doing in delivering safe and quality care.

Staffing and Quality Measures rating

We collect data for Staffing and Quality Measures and update the rating every quarter.

Residents’ Experience rating

We collect Residents’ Experience data every year, and update the rating every quarter for completed surveys that are available.

An independent survey team surveys around 20% of all residents each year on how they feel about the care they get. Providers do not choose who takes part in the survey. We use this data to work out the Residents’ Experience rating. 

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission decides how well an aged care home meets government standards and regulations relating to quality and safety. We use this data to work out the Compliance rating.

Providers provide us with their quality indicator data through the National Aged Care Mandatory Quality Indicator Program. They list the care minutes in their Quarterly Financial Report. We use this data to work out the Quality Measures and Staffing ratings.

We assess or verify the data from providers. We review the data before we work out the Star Ratings. By law, providers must submit correct data. The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission may take action if they don’t.

We check the data for care minutes and labour costs that providers submit in their Quarterly Financial Reports. This finds any errors or issues in the reported information.

Star Ratings show whether a provider has had specific formal regulatory notices

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission gives these notices when providers don't meet their responsibilities, including the Aged Care Quality Standards. 

If providers show they can fix their compliance issues, they may not get a formal notice, but the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission will check on the provider's progress even if they don't get a formal notice.

We’ve included 2 example cases to help explain how this works.

Case study 1

Aged care home A has a Compliance rating of 4 stars. 

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission assesses the home and finds it doesn’t meet:

• 3 requirements of Standard 3 (Personal care and clinical care)
• 2 requirements of Standard 7 (Human resources).

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission is concerned: 

• about the quality of wound and pressure care and pain management
• that there aren’t enough trained workers to meet residents’ needs.

This is an immediate and severe risk to the health, safety and wellbeing of residents. 

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission gives the home a formal notice to fix the serious compliance issues. This is called a Notice of Requirement to Agree.

This reduces the home’s 4-star Compliance rating and Overall Star Rating to 1 star.

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission will make sure the provider is working to fix the issues. 

At the end of the notice period, it will change the notice from a ‘current compliance notice’ to a ‘non-current notice’. This is shown on the My Aged Care website. 

We will give the provider a 3-star Compliance rating if the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission:

• is happy with how the provider responds
• hasn’t given the provider a notice for at least a year.

Case study 2

Aged care home B has a Compliance rating of 4 stars. 

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission assesses the home and finds it doesn’t meet one requirement of Standard 8 (Organisational governance). 

It has concerns about how the home manages processes for people coming in and out of the home. This includes through the security fences and gates.

In response, the provider is quick to fix the compliance issues. They have also updated their Plan for Continuous Improvement. This explains the provider’s plan to improve their care and services.

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission decides not to give the home a formal regulatory notice because:

• residents are not at immediate risk from the compliance issues
• the provider is already working to fix the issues.

But the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission will continue to check on the home.

Home B does not currently meet the Aged Care Quality Standards. 

The home can keep its 4-star Compliance rating because the provider is in the process of fixing the issues. But My Aged Care will show that one requirement for that home is ‘not met’ for Standard 8. 

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission will update this after re-assessing the home.

We publish all reports about a service’s compliance with the Quality Standards.

Aged care homes with:

• a 1-star Compliance rating get an Overall Star Rating of 1, even if they rate well in other sub-categories
• a 2-star Compliance rating can’t have more than a 2-star Overall Star Rating.

We run the survey once a year so that aged care providers have time to improve in response to the results. 

The survey shouldn’t replace communication between you and your aged care home. 

Your home should ask for your ongoing feedback to keep improving.

You can give feedback to your home in other ways – for example, you can: 

• talk to any member of your care team
• participate in the Quality of Care Experience-Aged Care Consumers© tool as part of the National Aged Care Mandatory Quality Indicator Program.

You should speak to your provider to understand why they have a low Star Rating and what they are doing to improve. 

Talking to your provider is often the fastest way to address your questions or concerns.

We understand these conversations with providers can be difficult. If you would like support, contact the Older Persons Advocacy Network (OPAN) on 1800 700 600 for free advocacy service.

If you haven’t been able to resolve an issue with your provider, you can make a complaint with the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, by:

• calling 1800 951 822
• lodging it online 
• writing to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, GPO Box 9819, in your capital city.

You can use Star Ratings to learn about other options if you’re thinking of moving to a new aged care home or changing providers.

Find more about changing providers on the My Aged Care website or by calling 1800 200 422.

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission:

•  checks aged care homes to make sure homes are meeting the rules and standards to provide safe and quality care
• works with homes that have 1 and 2 stars to improve their quality of care.

The care residents need varies between aged care homes. We need to allow for these differences so that the ratings are fair when you compare homes.

An independent assessor works out the level of care a resident needs. We take these levels into account when we work out the Quality Measures rating.

The Staffing rating also accounts for the different care needs of residents. Homes with residents who have higher care needs must provide more minutes of care than other homes.

Star Ratings has already helped improve aged care. 

When it began in December 2022, 39% of residential aged care homes had a Star Rating of 4 or 5, compared with 66% of homes in August 2024.