The Aged Care Act 2024 is now in force, and the shift from the old 1997 framework is not a simple policy update. It changes how providers register, how they demonstrate quality, and how they prove compliance during unannounced visits. This checklist breaks the new Act into 11 practical actions your team can start today, with clear evidence requirements for each. Whether you are preparing for renewal, responding to a strengthened standard, or closing gaps before an assessor arrives, these steps give you a working compliance framework rather than a folder of untested policies.
Non-compliance can put registration, funding and resident safety at risk. Unannounced visits have also become more common, so a policy folder that looks tidy is no longer enough. This checklist turns the new Aged Care Act into 11 actions your team can start today, with an evidence trail for each one. Providers should also be alert to the aged care compliance mistakes to avoid as they review their controls.
What Is the New Aged Care Act?
The Aged Care Act 2024 replaced the former Aged Care Act 1997 and changed the way providers must think about compliance. The new law puts older people’s rights at the centre, sets clearer duties for providers, and links registration to the delivery of safe, quality care.
The Act came from a long reform process. Its stated aim is to strengthen the rights of older Australians while making provider duties clearer.
For providers, the change is bigger than a new policy manual. Your board must know what the organisation owes older people. Your managers must show how those duties work on a normal shift. Staff must know what to do when care falls short.
Checklist item 1: Map every service to the new Act
List each residential, home care or other funded service your organisation runs. Then link each service to its registration category, key obligations and accountable executive. Keep the map under change control so a new service does not sit outside the compliance system.
Providers should also compare old documents with the new framework. A policy written for the former approval model may still describe the wrong decision-maker, evidence set or escalation path. Mark each document as current, needs review or retired.
The new system also brings a registration mindset. Registration is not a one-off badge. It depends on whether the provider can keep meeting its duties and show that it knows where risk sits.
That creates a useful test for every requirement: who owns it, what control supports it, what evidence proves it, and what happens when the control fails? If your team can’t answer those four questions, the requirement is not yet under control.
AssurePlus’s aged care management software for Australian providers is designed around this type of obligation and evidence structure.
Older People’s Rights, Choice and Cultural Safety
The new aged care act makes rights part of daily service delivery. Providers must be able to show that older people are treated with dignity and respect, can make choices about care, and feel safe.
The Statement of Rights gives this work a clear reference point. It covers matters such as freedom from abuse and neglect, privacy, identity, communication and participation in decisions. Rights should not live only in an admission pack. Staff need to use them when they plan care, respond to complaints or make a difficult risk decision.
Checklist item 2: Put the Statement of Rights into the care journey
Review admission, assessment and care-plan forms. Make sure the older person can record what matters to them, who they want involved, how they communicate, and what choices they want staff to respect.
Then test the records against the person’s day. If a resident says they prefer a late breakfast, that preference should appear in the care plan and be known by the relevant team. If a person has a cultural or faith need, staff should know what action follows from that need.
Do not treat cultural safety as a tick box. It includes identity, language, family structures and past experiences of care. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander older people, LGBTIQ+ older people, veterans, people from culturally diverse communities and people with disability may need different support.
Ask older people whether the written plan matches their life. Assessors can compare records with interviews, observation and what staff say. A generic diversity statement will not explain how care changes for one person.
AssurePlus can link rights-based controls to care records, feedback, complaints and review actions.
Checklist item 3: Check consent and decision records
For each high-risk decision, record the person’s view, who took part, the information given and the reason for the final choice. Review the record when the person’s capacity, health or wishes change.
This matters when a person declines a service, changes a nominee, refuses a treatment or asks for a different routine. Staff should not rely on a verbal handover that leaves no trace. A short record can protect the person and the provider.
Complaints need the same care. Record the concern in the person’s own terms where possible. Show who reviewed it, what was done and whether the outcome was explained back to the person.
Use feedback as a control check. A rise in complaints about missed showers may point to a roster issue, a care-plan gap or a training problem. The complaint is the signal. The provider still needs to find the cause and track the fix.
Provider Governance and the New Quality Expectations
The strengthened Quality Standards give the new aged care act its working shape. They replaced the former eight-standard framework with seven standards focused on the older person’s experience and the provider’s actions.
Each standard includes outcomes, expectation statements and actions. This structure changes the question an assessor asks. It is no longer enough to say that the organisation supports quality. The provider must show what it does, who checks it and what changed after a problem.
The seven standards are set out in the strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards.
Checklist item 4: Give the board a live quality view
Set a fixed reporting cycle for incidents, complaints, restrictive practices, clinical risks, workforce gaps, care minutes and open corrective actions. Show trends and exceptions, not only a green status.
Standard 2 makes governance and accountability visible. A committee that meets on paper will not help if no one checks whether its decisions reached the floor. Meeting papers should show the risk, the evidence reviewed, the decision made and the person responsible for follow-up.
Risk registers need the same treatment. A static list of risks is easy to file and hard to manage. Give each risk a control, an owner, a review date and a clear trigger for escalation.
For example, a repeated shortfall on night shifts should not sit as a note in a workforce report. It should connect to a risk record, a staffing action and a board view of whether the action worked.
AssurePlus can connect governance obligations with risk registers, control reviews, board reporting and corrective actions.
Checklist item 5: Test the seven standards at action level
Build a register for Standards 1 to 7. For every action, name the evidence that should exist and the person who keeps it current.
Standard 1 covers the individual. Standard 2 covers the organisation. Standard 3 covers care and services. Standard 4 covers the environment. Standard 5 covers clinical care. Standard 6 covers food and nutrition. Standard 7 covers the residential community.
The standards applied from 1 November 2025. The date has passed, so providers should treat any unfinished work as an active compliance gap rather than a future project.
Run a sample review across different shifts and locations. Compare the care plan with progress notes, handover records and the older person’s account. This finds gaps that a policy review can miss.
Audit Evidence, Registration and Renewal Requirements
Audits under the new aged care act depend on evidence that can be found, understood and tied to a requirement. A policy without proof of use is weak evidence. So is a spreadsheet with no owner or review history.
Registration and renewal work should start well before an assessor arrives. The team needs one evidence plan that covers the service, the standard, the action, the record location and the last test date.
Checklist item 6: Build an audit evidence index
Create one row for each requirement. Add the document name, system location, accountable owner, review date and evidence period. Include a note if the evidence is sampled rather than complete.
The Care Delivery Evidence Collection Tool is required as part of every aged care renewal audit for Category 4, 5 and 6 providers. The pre-audit document list has also expanded for those categories. That means a last-minute document hunt can leave a real gap even when care is being delivered well.
The Audit Evidence Collection Tool is also required for registration and renewal audits under the strengthened standards. Treat these tools as part of the audit workflow, not as an admin task that starts after the notice arrives.
Evidence should show the full loop:
- the risk or requirement was identified;
- a control was assigned;
- the control was used;
- someone checked the result;
- the provider acted when the result was poor.
AssurePlus can map obligations to evidence, assign audit tasks and keep a time-stamped record of reviews.
Checklist item 7: Prepare for an unannounced visit
Ask a manager who is not the usual compliance lead to find five key records without help. Include a current care plan, an incident file, a complaint record, a workforce record and a corrective action.
This test shows whether evidence is truly available. It also shows whether staff can explain what happened. Assessors may compare what they see in the service with what the records claim.
Keep a clear escalation plan for an audit notice or visit. Name the person who receives the request. Set out who gathers records, who checks privacy, who speaks for the service and who tracks follow-up actions.
Do not edit old records to make them look better. Preserve the original record and add a dated correction or explanation. A clean audit trail is more useful than a perfect-looking file.
AssurePlus’s audit management software for smarter assessments can support this evidence and action workflow.
Clinical Care, Safe Environments, Food and Community Life
The new aged care act brings several daily care areas into a tighter quality frame. Providers must connect clinical decisions with the person’s goals, safety needs and lived experience.
Checklist item 8: Review clinical risk controls
Check how your service manages medication, wounds, pain, continence, infection prevention, restrictive practices and clinical escalation. For each area, confirm the assessment, action, review and sign-off.
Standard 5 is not satisfied by a clinical policy alone. A reviewer may follow one person’s care over time. The record should show what changed after a fall, a wound review, a medication concern or a change in behaviour.
Clinical governance should also connect to workforce skill. If a task needs a registered nurse, the roster and handover should make that clear. When a nurse is unavailable, staff need a safe escalation path.
Incident records matter here. Capture the first account, the person’s impact, the immediate response and the decision about further reporting. Then link the investigation to corrective action. Providers should also follow a SIRS compliance guide for aged care providers when determining whether an incident requires reporting. AssurePlus’s incident management software for compliance can help keep that chain together.
Checklist item 9: Inspect the physical and digital environment
Walk every resident area, service area and back-of-house space. Check cleaning, maintenance, equipment testing, infection controls, privacy and access to useful information.
Standard 4 covers a safe and supportive environment. A polished foyer does not prove that resident rooms feel safe or that equipment checks are current. Ask staff to show how they report a hazard and how they know it was fixed.
Digital systems need the same attention. Review access rights, shared logins, privacy risks and downtime plans. A record that cannot be found during a system outage is a care risk as well as an information risk.
AssurePlus can assign environment checks, track remediation and link technology risks to responsible owners.
Checklist item 10: Make food and community life measurable
Record each person’s food needs, preferences, risks and changes. Check whether meals meet those needs. Then review activity plans against what people actually want to do.
Standard 6 covers food and nutrition, including adequacy and dietitian involvement where needed. A menu may look suitable while one person receives the wrong texture or misses a meal they cannot tolerate.
Standard 7 covers the residential community. Meaningful activity does not mean filling a calendar. It means supporting daily life, social connection and belonging. Record participation without treating refusal as failure. The person’s choice is part of the evidence.
A monthly activity report cannot replace a conversation. Staff should know what gives each person purpose, who they want to see and what helps them feel at home.
Care Minutes and Usable Compliance Readiness
Care minutes create a separate workforce control under the new aged care act. They need daily operational attention, not just a quarterly report.
The mandatory requirement is 215 minutes of care per resident per day, including 44 minutes of registered nurse time. This has applied sector-wide since 1 October 2024. Each facility’s individual target is calculated from its residents’ AN-ACC classifications and is published quarterly by the Department; providers should access their current facility-level target through the My Aged Care Service and Support Portal before setting local controls.
Checklist item 11: Monitor care minutes by shift and resident mix
Start with the required average. Then look at the cause of each shortfall. Record roster gaps, unplanned leave, agency changes, occupancy shifts and changes in resident acuity.
An average can hide a poor night shift. It can also hide a week where one wing received less care than planned. Report the average beside the variance, the risk and the action.
Registered nurse time needs its own check. Confirm that the roster reflects the required coverage and that the person on duty has the role, skill and access needed for safe care. A payroll record alone may not show whether the nurse was available to residents.
Care-minute controls work best when finance, rostering, clinical leadership and quality staff use the same data. If each team keeps a different figure, the board cannot tell which one is right. The right aged care compliance software in Australia can help teams maintain a consistent view of those obligations and exceptions.
AssurePlus can place care-minute obligations beside workforce risks, evidence requests, exceptions and remediation tasks.
A readiness review should finish with a short action list. Give every gap an owner and due date. Set a proof-of-completion rule. For a roster gap, that may be a revised roster plus a review of the affected shift. For a training gap, it may be completion evidence followed by observation.
Use a control cycle rather than a once-a-year scramble:
- review the obligation;
- test the control;
- record the result;
- escalate exceptions;
- check whether the fix worked.
AssurePlus can support this cycle as an integrated governance, risk and compliance system. Providers can also use its AI-powered compliance management platform to keep obligations, tests and evidence in one working view.
Conclusion
Start with a gap review across rights, governance, clinical care, evidence and workforce coverage. Then load each open action into a controlled register, with an owner and proof of completion. AssurePlus can give providers one place to manage those obligations, but the next step is yours: test one service this week and fix what the records do not show.
Book an AssurePlus demo to see how AI-powered GRC software handles obligation mapping, audit evidence and care-minute tracking in one connected platform.
FAQ
What is the new aged care act in Australia?
The new aged care act is the Aged Care Act 2024, which replaced the former Aged Care Act 1997. It strengthens older people’s rights, sets clearer provider duties, introduces a new registration approach and supports the seven strengthened Quality Standards.
When did the new Aged Care Act start?
The new Aged Care Act commenced on 1 November 2025. The strengthened Quality Standards applied from that date, while care-minute requirements had an earlier compliance timetable. Providers should check current regulator guidance when a target or registration duty changes.
What are the seven strengthened aged care standards?
The seven standards cover the individual, the organisation, care and services, the environment, clinical care, food and nutrition, and the residential community. Providers should test the actions under each standard because assessors look for evidence of what staff do.
How many care minutes must aged care providers deliver?
Providers should confirm the current target that applies to their service before setting rosters. Supplied guidance identifies 215 minutes per resident per day, including 44 minutes of registered nurse time, which has applied since 1 October 2024.
What evidence do aged care providers need for renewal?
Providers need organised evidence that links each requirement to a control and a result. Renewal work may include the Care Delivery Evidence Collection Tool for relevant provider categories and the Audit Evidence Collection Tool. Keep records easy to find, current and tied to named owners.