Aged Care
Star Rating System
Explained

Aged Care Quality and Standards

Aged Care Star Ratings

What is the purpose of the Aged Care Star Rating system?

The Aged Care Rating System is a direct result of the recent Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety.

The Royal Commission identified the need to provide aged care consumers with a simple, transparent and objective way to compare the quality of aged care homes.

At the release of the star rating system, Aged Care Minister Anika Wells told The Age newspaper that the star rating system was designed to “shine a light on system-wide issues, including the workforce, and help government understand where to take further action - you can’t improve what you can’t measure”.

Like to Know More?

The purpose of the Aged Care Rating System is to:

  • help the consumer compare options and make a more informed decision about local aged care homes. The Star Rating System provides a score for aged care homes against set criteria to make them easy to compare
  • inform the aged care provider where they are positioned concerning other providers in critical care, lifestyle and staffing areas
  • help the Commonwealth identify and continually monitor sub-standard providers


How many levels are in the Aged Care Star Rating system?

Each aged care home is categorised into one of 5 levels:

Significant Improvement Required

Improvement Required

Acceptable

Good

Excellent


Where can you find the Aged Care Star Rating for any aged care home?

The Aged Care Star Ratings can be found at Aged Care Provider Search




What Benefits does the Aged Care Star Ratings system provide?

The Aged Care Star Ratings system is a key outcome of the aged care reforms and delivers many benefits, including:

  • Transparency about the quality of care in all aged care homes
  • An easy way to compare the quality of aged care homes using the ‘Find a provider’ tool on the My Aged Care website
  • Nationally consistent quality measures to monitor, compare and improve aged care for All Australians
  • Providers will be engaged to continuously improve their Star Ratings, improving the quality of care for older Australians



How is the Aged Care Star Rating system calculated?

The decision on what level of stars an aged care home receives is based upon four key areas of performance:

Compliance Rating

which is based on providers’ performance concerning government regulations and standards about the safety and quality of care they offer.

Quality Measures Rating

which looks at health issues that are important indicators of whether an aged care home is providing high-quality care to its residents. It looks at incidents at the aged care home over the previous quarter and compares these results to the national average. This rating is updated every 3 months. The health issues covered are pressure injuries, physical restraint, unplanned weight loss, falls and major injuries, and medication management.

Residents’ Experience Rating

which is based on an aged care home’s results in the annual Resident Experience Surveys. The residents' experience rating is updated annually, in line with the survey cycle. Information about Residents’ Experiences is collected from face-to-face interviews, by a third party vendor with at least 10% of older Australians across all residential aged care homes.

Staffing Rating

which is based on an aged care home's reporting on the following care time targets: the total amount of nursing and personal care time from a registered nurse, enrolled nurse and personal care worker, and the care time from a registered nurse only. Staffing uses the information reported on registered nurses, enrolled nurses and personal care workers from the Quarterly Financial Report.




What does it mean if an Aged Care Home has No Rating?

There are several reasons why an aged care home may be displaying a ‘NO RATING’ label.

This may be because the aged care home:

  • is a new provider
  • is operating under new ownership
  • has recently reopened after major repairs or renovations
  • is experiencing technical (data or IT) issues
  • has received a temporary exemption due to significant health- or weather-related circumstances

What about a NEW Aged Care Home – when do they get a Rating?

For new aged care providers, change of ownership, or recent reopening, data and subcategory ratings will appear in about 6 months. The overall Star Rating will be displayed at 12 months after the data across all four subcategories has been collected.

When are the Star Ratings updated?

How frequently will Star Ratings be updated? Star Ratings are updated at different periods:

  • Compliance is updated daily
  • Residents’ Experience is updated yearly
  • The Staffing and Quality Measures ratings are updated every three months
  • The overall Star Rating automatically recalculates when new data is available

References:

myagedcare.gov.au/quality-aged-care

health.gov.au/star-ratings



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