Defining quality care

Defining quality care is important. It lets you know:

what to look for when choosing a provider
what to expect when you're using care services
your options if care isn't up to standard.

We monitor the quality of residential aged care and home services funded by the Australian Government. This covers most aged care services but doesn't include retirement villages.

If a service isn't providing high-quality care, we make them take action. This can include requiring them to:

give us a plan about how they're going to improve their care
do certain things such as training or employing more staff
employ an expert advisor to help them fix problems
only take on new residents once the problems have been fixed.

We also publish information on My Aged Care when a service isn't meeting the Quality Standards. We can take serious action if a provider doesn’t fix the problems. This could include taking away their approval to provide aged care.

How we can help you

If you have a concern with your care, you have the right to ask your provider to work with you to fix it. They must have a process for responding to feedback and complaints and tell you what they're doing about your concern.

Your service mustn't treat you differently because you raised a complaint about your care. The Charter of Aged Care Rights protects your right to raise a complaint.

If you're unhappy with how your provider deals with your concern, or you have a question about your aged care service or rights, you can talk to us. We will:

listen to you
give you information
work with you and your provider to resolve your concern.

A family member, friend or advocate can contact us for you with your permission. You can talk to us confidentially or anonymously if you prefer.

Our complaints service is free. You can contact us by phone, online form, email or post.

Advocates

You can ask an aged care advocate to help you sort out a problem with your provider. An advocate is an independent person who can help you understand your rights. They can also support you to sort out any aged care problems.

Advocates can help you talk to your provider or raise a complaint with us.

You can get free and confidential help from the Older Persons Advocacy Network by calling 1800 700 600.

Aged care performance

Our Find a report page has the latest performance reports about individual services.

The performance information includes:

reports based on our assessments
decisions about accreditation of residential services
other historical performance information.

Monitoring performance

Non-compliance

You can find information about provider non-compliance in our register of non-compliance.

Our register includes any regulatory actions we take.

You can also find providers who have compliance issues on My Aged Care’s website.

Enforceable undertaking

We may agree with a provider on a course of action to address non-compliance. In that case, we may accept an enforceable undertaking from them.

An enforceable undertaking may be used when:

the provider is willing and able to address their non-compliance
a clear, timely pathway for ensuring compliance is included in the undertaking
there’s no immediate or significant risk of harm to their residents.

To check current agreements with individual providers, visit our Enforceable undertakings page.

Directions

There may be instances when providers don’t comply with their responsibilities. If so, we’ll notify them via a notice of intention to give directions. We also provide them with an opportunity to respond to those concerns.

If they don’t respond or don’t satisfy us that they’re compliant, we may issue them with directions.

To check the register of directions we've issued, visit our Complaints directions page.