What Are Care Minutes? Understanding Australia's Residential Aged Care Requirements
Care minutes are a central component of Australia's residential aged care requirements. They establish expectations for the amount of direct care residents receive from registered nurses, enrolled nurses and personal care workers. For residential aged care providers, meeting these requirements involves more than increasing staffing levels. It requires effective workforce planning, accurate reporting, reliable data and appropriate governance.
With care minutes influencing Star Ratings, regulatory compliance and, for some providers, funding, the ability to demonstrate care delivery has become increasingly important. This article explains the current requirements, how care minutes are calculated and reported, and the role technology can play in supporting providers.
Updated for October 2026
What are care minutes?
Care minutes measure the amount of direct care delivered to residents of Australian residential aged care homes by eligible care workers. These include registered nurses (RNs), enrolled nurses (ENs), personal care workers (PCWs) and assistants in nursing (AINs).
Eligible activities can include:
Personal care: Assistance with hygiene, dressing, mobility and other daily living activities.
Nursing care: Clinical assessment, medication management, monitoring and nursing interventions.
Care planning: Eligible resident-specific documentation and care planning activities.
Direct support: Other qualifying activities that address residents' assessed care needs
Mandatory care minutes were introduced following recommendations from the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, which identified staffing levels and access to qualified care workers as important contributors to care quality. The requirements are intended to ensure residents receive appropriate direct care based on their assessed needs, while establishing greater transparency and accountability for providers.
What are the current care minute requirements?
As of October 2026, Australia's residential aged care requirements are based on a sector-wide average of 215 minutes of direct care per resident per day, including 44 minutes of registered nurse care. These requirements commenced on 1 October 2024, following the initial introduction of mandatory care minutes in October 2023.
Requirement Sector-wide average
Total direct care 215 minutes per resident per day
Registered nurse care 44 minutes per resident per day
Importantly, these sector-wide averages are not identical targets for every aged care home. Each residential aged care home has its own care minute targets, reflecting the assessed care needs of its residents. Providers must therefore understand and monitor their individual targets rather than assuming that achieving the national average automatically demonstrates compliance.
Enrolled nurse care may contribute towards up to 10% of a home's registered nurse care minute target, subject to the applicable rules. Providers are expected to meet both their total care minutes target and their registered nurse care minutes target, with performance measured across the relevant reporting period rather than requiring every resident to receive precisely the same number of minutes each day.
Care delivery must nevertheless remain responsive to individual resident needs and care plans. Care minute targets establish workforce expectations but do not replace professional judgement or the obligation to provide safe, appropriate and person-centred care.
How are care minute targets calculated?
Care minute targets are adjusted according to the assessed care needs of residents within each aged care home, using an approach known as case-mix adjustment. This recognises that homes supporting residents with more complex clinical and personal care needs generally require greater direct care resources than homes supporting residents with lower care needs.
The Australian National Aged Care Classification (AN-ACC) funding model classifies residents according to their assessed care requirements. These classifications, together with relevant occupancy information, contribute to determining each home's care minute targets. As the resident population changes, the care requirements and associated targets may also change.
For example, a residential aged care home supporting a higher proportion of residents with complex clinical needs may have a higher care minute target than the sector-wide average. Conversely, a home with residents requiring less intensive support may have a lower target. This means providers need to monitor their individual requirements and understand how changes in resident classifications affect workforce planning.
The Department publishes care minute targets for individual homes and provides supporting calculation resources. These should form the basis of each provider's workforce planning, performance monitoring and reporting processes.
What activities count towards care minutes?
Not every hour worked by an aged care employee qualifies as a care minute.
The reporting framework distinguishes between eligible direct care activities and other work undertaken within an aged care home.
Eligible activities can include:
Providing personal care, such as assistance with hygiene, dressing and mobility.
Delivering nursing care and clinical interventions.
Assessing residents and monitoring their clinical condition.
Providing medication management and other eligible clinical support.
Undertaking resident-specific care planning and documentation.
Providing eligible direct emotional and social support.
The treatment of particular activities depends on the worker's role, the nature of the activity and the applicable reporting definitions.
By contrast, general administration, recruitment, staff rostering and facility management are not ordinarily counted as direct care minutes. Time worked by catering, cleaning, maintenance, lifestyle and allied health staff is also generally excluded from the mandatory care minutes calculation, even though these services contribute to residents' overall wellbeing and quality of life.
The eligibility of personal care workers and assistants in nursing is particularly important. Updated definitions introduced in January 2025 distinguish eligible personal care workers from other aged care occupations, reinforcing the need for accurate workforce classifications.
For providers, this creates a practical data management challenge. Workforce management and payroll systems may record employees according to organisational roles, industrial classifications or cost centres that do not directly correspond with regulatory reporting definitions. Without clear mapping and consistent processes, otherwise reliable workforce information can produce inaccurate care minute calculations.
How are care minutes measured and reported?
Residential aged care providers report care minutes through the Quarterly Financial Report (QFR). The reported information includes eligible direct care worked hours for relevant employees and agency workers, which are used to calculate the average direct care minutes delivered per resident per day.
At a simplified level, the calculation is:
Average care minutes per resident per day = Eligible direct care worked hours × 60 ÷ Occupied bed days
Registered nurse care minutes are calculated separately using the applicable eligible hours and rules. The calculation provides a consistent measure of staffing resources relative to resident occupancy, allowing performance to be compared with the home's care minute targets.
For example, consider a residential aged care home with 100 occupied beds throughout a 30-day period and 10,750 eligible direct care worked hours. The calculation would be 10,750 × 60 ÷ 3,000, resulting in an average of 215 care minutes per resident per day. This is an illustrative example; actual reporting must follow the Department's prescribed definitions and methodology.
Accurate reporting depends on reliable workforce records, correct staff classifications and appropriate reconciliation processes. Providers must distinguish between rostered hours, paid hours and eligible worked hours, as these figures are not necessarily identical. Where information is distributed across workforce management, payroll, agency staffing and care systems, manual reconciliation can introduce additional complexity and reporting risk.
For multi-site providers, consistency is especially important. Differences in workforce classifications, local practices or reporting processes can produce misleading comparisons between homes, even when the underlying data appears complete.
What changed in 2026?
An important development is the introduction of the Care Minutes Performance Statement (CMPS), which adds an external assurance requirement to care minutes reporting.
From the 2025–26 Aged Care Financial Report, residential aged care providers must prepare and submit an externally audited statement of their care minutes performance. The statement includes information relating to direct care worked hours, direct care labour costs, registered nurse coverage and occupied bed days.
The first statement covers the third and fourth quarters of the 2025–26 financial year, together with specified registered nurse coverage information. For providers operating on a standard financial-year reporting cycle, the first submission is due on 31 October 2026.
This represents a significant development in reporting accountability. Providers must be able to demonstrate not only that care minute information has been submitted, but also that the underlying data is accurate, traceable and supported by appropriate records. Differences between workforce systems, quarterly reporting and annual performance statements may require explanation and reconciliation.
The new assurance requirement does not replace existing quarterly reporting obligations. Instead, it reinforces the importance of maintaining reliable information and effective controls throughout the reporting period, rather than attempting to reconstruct supporting evidence at year-end.
For executives and operational leaders, this places greater emphasis on data governance, reporting ownership and the quality of processes connecting workforce, finance and care delivery information.
How do care minutes affect Star Ratings?
Care minutes contribute to the Staffing component of Australia's residential aged care Star Ratings system. From 1 October 2025, homes must meet both their total care minutes target and their registered nurse care minutes target to achieve a Staffing rating of three stars or higher. The updated methodology was reflected in published Star Ratings from May 2026.
This means that care minute performance has implications beyond regulatory reporting. It can influence how a home's staffing performance is presented to prospective residents, families and the broader community, making it an important consideration for operational management and organisational reputation.
However, care minutes should not be interpreted as a complete measure of care quality. The availability of appropriately qualified staff is important, but resident outcomes also depend on clinical capability, continuity of care, effective processes and the quality of interactions between care workers and residents.
A provider may achieve its numerical care minute targets while still facing challenges relating to workforce deployment, care coordination or service consistency. Equally, improvements in staffing efficiency should not be pursued at the expense of resident needs or the quality of care delivered.
The objective should therefore be to use care minute information as one component of a broader approach to workforce effectiveness, clinical governance and quality improvement.
How do care minutes affect aged care funding?
The AN-ACC funding model supports the delivery of residential aged care, including the provision of direct care minutes. Care minute targets are linked to assessed resident needs, creating a relationship between the funding framework, workforce requirements and the resources needed to deliver care.
From 1 April 2026, the Australian Government introduced changes linking part of the care funding for eligible non-specialised metropolitan residential aged care homes to their care minutes performance. These arrangements operate through the care minutes supplement and introduce direct financial implications for affected providers.
For aged care executives, this reinforces the relationship between workforce planning, operational performance, reporting accuracy and financial sustainability. Providers need to understand not only whether their homes are meeting care minute targets, but also how performance and reporting affect their funding arrangements.
The introduction of externally audited care minutes information further strengthens the need for confidence in reported data. Errors in workforce classifications, worked hours or occupancy information may have consequences extending beyond internal management reporting.
Consequently, care minute performance should be considered within broader financial and operational governance, rather than managed as an isolated compliance activity.
Why is accurate care minute reporting important?
Care minute reporting is often approached primarily as a regulatory obligation. However, the underlying workforce and care delivery information can provide valuable operational insights when it is reliable, accessible and interpreted appropriately.
For example, consistent workforce data can help providers understand whether sufficient eligible care staff are available to meet resident needs, whether registered nurse coverage aligns with operational requirements and how staffing resources are distributed across homes and shifts. It can also highlight where administrative processes, fragmented applications or duplicated activities may be affecting workforce effectiveness.
For multi-site providers, reliable reporting supports meaningful comparisons between homes and helps identify where performance differences require further investigation. Such comparisons must nevertheless account for variations in resident needs, workforce arrangements and operating environments.
Accurate information also supports stronger governance. Executives and boards need confidence that reported performance reflects actual workforce activity and that management can explain how figures were derived. This requires clear accountability, documented definitions, appropriate validation and effective reconciliation between source systems.
The broader opportunity is to move beyond producing a quarterly compliance report towards establishing a dependable information capability that supports operational decisions, workforce planning and continuous improvement.
Can technology improve care minute reporting?
Technology can reduce the administrative effort associated with collecting, validating and reporting care minute information. Many providers already hold relevant data across workforce management, rostering, payroll, agency staffing, clinical and financial systems. The challenge is often not the absence of data, but the difficulty of bringing it together accurately and consistently.
Integration and automation can improve reporting reliability by reducing manual data transfers, applying consistent business rules and identifying exceptions that require investigation. Automated reconciliation can also help providers identify discrepancies between rostered shifts, attendance records, payroll information and reported eligible worked hours.
Some providers may evaluate additional technologies, including real-time location systems (RTLS), sensors and workforce activity monitoring solutions, to better understand care delivery patterns. These technologies may provide operational insights, but their suitability depends on the intended use, implementation approach and reliability of the information generated.
A critical distinction is that measuring the proximity of a care worker to a resident does not necessarily establish the amount of eligible direct care delivered. Similarly, technology-generated activity records should not automatically be treated as equivalent to the regulatory definitions used to calculate care minutes.
Providers should therefore evaluate technology against clearly defined reporting requirements, existing business processes and operational needs. Considerations include data quality, interoperability, privacy, cybersecurity, vendor accountability and the ability to validate information before it is used for regulatory reporting.
A sound technology strategy begins with understanding the problem and establishing appropriate governance, rather than selecting a technology first.
Five considerations for aged care providers
For providers seeking to improve care minute performance and reporting capability, five areas deserve particular attention.
Establish clear accountability. Define ownership of workforce information, care minute calculations, reporting processes and assurance activities. Accountability should extend across operational, workforce, finance and technology functions, with clear responsibility for resolving data discrepancies and approving reported information.
Review workforce classifications. Ensure staff roles, qualifications and eligible activities are correctly represented across workforce and reporting systems. Consistent definitions are essential, particularly where providers operate multiple homes or engage agency staff through different arrangements.
Improve data integration. Identify where manual transfers, disconnected applications or inconsistent information create reporting risks. Integration should focus on establishing reliable information flows and reducing unnecessary administrative effort, rather than simply connecting systems without addressing underlying data quality.
Introduce appropriate controls. Establish validation, reconciliation and exception-management processes that support accurate reporting and external assurance. These controls should be embedded into regular operational processes so that issues are identified and resolved throughout the reporting period.
Evaluate technology against operational needs. Prioritise solutions that improve data reliability, reduce administrative effort and support workforce effectiveness. Technology investments should be assessed against measurable outcomes, implementation complexity, ongoing operating costs and the organisation's ability to adopt and sustain the solution.
The objective should not simply be to automate a report. It should be to establish a dependable information capability that supports care delivery, management decisions and regulatory accountability.
From compliance to better care delivery
Care minutes represent an important part of Australia's residential aged care framework. For providers, the challenge is to meet these requirements while maintaining an appropriate balance between care quality, workforce capacity, operational efficiency and financial sustainability.
The increasing emphasis on reporting assurance, transparency and funding accountability makes effective information management essential. Providers that establish clear governance, reliable data and integrated processes will be better positioned to manage these responsibilities while identifying opportunities to improve workforce effectiveness and care delivery.
Technology can play an important role, but its value depends on how well it supports the organisation's care model, operating environment and strategic objectives. Successful digital improvement requires more than implementing applications or automating existing processes; it requires informed decisions about how people, processes, information and technology work together.
At eHomeCare, we provide independent digital strategy, governance and technology advisory services to help aged care providers make informed technology decisions and improve operational outcomes.
Explore our Digital Governance and Technology Advisory services to learn how we support practical, sustainable digital improvement.
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