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Aged Care Star Ratings
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”.
The purpose of the Aged Care Rating System is to:
Each aged care home is categorised into one of 5 levels:
Significant Improvement RequiredThe Aged Care Star Ratings can be found at Aged Care Provider Search
The Aged Care Star Ratings system is a key outcome of the aged care reforms and delivers many benefits, including:
The decision on what level of stars an aged care home receives is based upon four key areas of performance:
which is based on providers’ performance concerning government regulations and standards about the safety and quality of care they offer.
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.
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.
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.
There are several reasons why an aged care home may be displaying a ‘NO RATING’ label.
This may be because the aged care home:
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.
How frequently will Star Ratings be updated? Star Ratings are updated at different periods:
References:
myagedcare.gov.au/quality-aged-care