In Australia’s aged care sector, time is both a measure of care and a lifeline for funding.
Yet, as fresh data from Mirus Australia reveals, providers are facing unprecedented delays in the reassessments that unlock vital subsidies under the Australian National Aged Care Classification (AN-ACC) system.
From January to February 2025, the average wait from request to reassessment leapt by 25.74%, rising from 22.11 days to 27.81 days. In regional areas, the picture is bleaker still, with delays surging by 30.87% to over 30 days.
For care homes wrestling with workforce shortages and a mandated 215-minute daily care target, this bottleneck isn’t merely an administrative snag – it’s a financial stranglehold threatening the quality of care for some of the nation’s most vulnerable.
Robert Covino, Industry Lead and Mirus Founder, doesn’t mince words about the human cost. “One group told me they’ve got 220 reclassifications sitting there, waiting,” he says.
“They won’t see that funding until the work’s done. But if those residents deteriorate or pass away before then, they don’t recover a cent.” It’s a brutal paradox: providers are rostering staff to meet rising needs. Total care minutes crept up by 0.14% to 208.54 per resident per day (PRPD), yet they’re left in limbo, unable to secure the funds to sustain that effort.
With the industry average daily subsidy (ADS) slipping from $298.08 to $297.90, these delays are amplifying an already precarious balancing act.
Introduced to tether funding to care delivery, the AN-ACC aimed to overhaul a sector where costs once spiralled unchecked. But the latest figures suggest it’s stumbling.
While registered nurse (RN) minutes rose 1.48% to 43.96 and allied health minutes climbed 3.02% to 9.73, the industry still falls short of the 215-minute target. Providers are trapped waiting for assessments that reflect residents’ evolving needs, a process Covino ties to the overstretched Assessment Management Organisations (AMOs).
“They’re impacted by leave and availability,” he explains, linking the delays to a national RN shortage and seasonal staffing dips. The data backs him up: voluntary claiming activity – proactive reassessment requests – nudged up from 3.72% to 4.19%, but 43.52% of AN-ACC remain unreassessed for over 12 months, freezing funding in an outdated snapshot of care.
The ripple effects are stark. “They’re saying, ‘I’m doing the work, I’ve got the teams in, but you can’t get to me,’” Covino says, echoing providers’ exasperation. He suggests a streamlined, one-off assessment classification system as a potential lifeline.
Without such reform, the delays risk embedding a flaw in the AN-ACC’s promise of fairness. Take a regional provider waiting 30.47 days for an AMO visit: if a resident’s condition worsens and requires more diversional therapy (up 3.74% to 6.04 minutes), the funding lag could force cuts elsewhere, like the 0.25% dip in assistant-in-nursing minutes to 158.16.
It’s a zero-sum game where every day counts.
Occupancy offers a bittersweet counterpoint, climbing 0.41% to 91.35% which is a post-pandemic peak. “It’s been a long time coming,” Covino notes, welcoming the demand surge. Yet more residents strain fixed rostering templates, and without swift reassessments, the cash flow to bolster staffing stalls.
A facility at 90% occupancy in January could hit 92% by February, but if funding trails weeks behind, compliance falters. The government’s response is unforgiving: from 2026, funding retractions loom for those missing targets.
Covino highlights the Department of Health and Aged Care’s data arsenal, as low RN minutes flag risks to resident safety which puts providers under a microscope. “It’s hard to dispute facts,” he says. “If you take the money, you’ve got to do the time.”
For residents, the wait isn’t just bureaucratic, it’s personal. A grandmother needing more care after a fall, a widower relying on allied health to stay mobile: their needs don’t pause, but the system does.
The data sketches a sector in flux, striving to marry funding, staffing, and compliance under a model that demands efficiency it can’t yet deliver.
Covino sees providers adapting, but the reassessment crisis tests their resilience. Until the system catches up, the clock ticks on, and the question lingers: who bears the cost when care can’t wait?
We have waited 9 months for a reassessment from level 2 to level for for my 92 year old husband living with dementia.
This was finally approved on 20/2/25
But we are yet to see any of it in our package from our provider
Why is it that whenever there is an inquiry into any process like Aged care, it ends up a chaos? We have been waiting for the outcome, which was completed and ready to roll out before the last election, when Labor won government. Here we are, after they insisted on doing a complete reassessment, then introducing changes to take control, reviewing the entire outcomes. This amounted to a 15% rise in Carers’ income, the Carers required a rise, yet the rise the Labor Government generously gave the pensioners’ Care Packages was .95%. Bought in the Star system levels for qualification of Aged Care Homes homes etc. placing high demands on an industry already struggling under rising costs, low numbers in qualified care etc. Yet the government y can do an assessment on NDIS with a massive $Billions blown-out drain on the taxpayer. Sadly, Mr Shorton has gone back on many of the changes, and has since retired from politics. I find it a disappointment Aged Care is back in this position and wonder how long it will be before there is a fall in Aged Care Nursing Homes and care providers in home care for the elderly who wish to live at home as long as they can.
Why are you and so many people including media using the word ‘care’ for this industdy generally and specifically when describing a clear lack of it.
The word ‘Care’ is used by government and industry to gaslight the aged people and the disinterested public. The word is used to create the illusion of its existence. The media are cimplicit in this fraud as is every person who mindlessly or mindfully apes the words fed to them.
Calling Residential Centres or Aged Accommodation ‘care homes’ is a level of misleading and deceptive rhetoric that in light of the evidence is beyond comprehension.