How to Become a Registered Aged Care Provider in Australia
The complete process: ACQSC approval, quality standards, worker screening, SIRS obligations, and what systems you need in place before delivering your first service.
Who needs to be an approved provider
Not every organisation delivering services to older Australians needs to be an approved aged care provider. The requirement applies to providers delivering services funded under the Aged Care Act 1997, which includes the Support at Home program (formerly Home Care Packages) and residential aged care.
If your organisation delivers only NDIS-funded services, you do not need aged care provider approval. You need NDIS registration instead. The two schemes have separate regulators, separate quality frameworks, and separate registration processes. An organisation can hold both.
If you plan to deliver services to clients who receive both NDIS funding and aged care funding, you need both registrations. The compliance obligations run in parallel.
The ACQSC application process
The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission (ACQSC) is the body that approves aged care providers. Applications go through the My Aged Care provider portal.
The Commission assesses four areas:
Governance. The Commission looks at your board or management structure, your organisational policies, and whether your governance arrangements can support safe, high-quality service delivery. For new providers, this means having documented governance policies before you apply, not as a condition of approval.
Financial viability. You need to demonstrate that your organisation can sustain service delivery financially. This typically involves providing recent financial statements, a business plan, and evidence of sufficient capital or funding to operate.
Workforce capability. The Commission assesses whether you have, or have plans to recruit, a workforce with the skills and qualifications to deliver the services you are applying to provide. This includes management capability, not just frontline care staff.
Systems. You need to show that you have systems in place to manage care delivery, maintain records, handle incidents, and meet your reporting obligations. A spreadsheet is not a sufficient answer to this question for most applicants.
The application process involves a formal assessment, which may include a site visit. Allow at minimum three to six months from application to approval, and often longer. Do not set a service start date before you have approval.
The 7 Strengthened Quality Standards
The Aged Care Quality Standards were strengthened and expanded as part of the aged care reforms. There are now seven standards:
- 1.The person
- 2.The organisation's governing body
- 3.The care and services
- 4.The environment
- 5.Clinical care
- 6.Food and nutrition
- 7.The organisation's workforce
Standard 5 (clinical care) applies to residential care providers and to home care providers delivering clinical services. If you are planning to deliver home care only and your services do not include clinical interventions, Standard 5 has limited application to your operation. Confirm the scope with the ACQSC before assuming it does not apply.
For a detailed breakdown of Standard 5 and the quality indicator framework, refer to the ACQSC's published guidance.
Worker screening requirements
Aged care worker screening is separate from NDIS Worker Screening. The requirement for residential aged care workers is a National Police Check, not the state-based NDIS Worker Screening Check.
The key points:
- Residential care: workers who have direct contact with care recipients must hold a satisfactory National Police Check. The check must be no more than three years old.
- Home care: the same National Police Check requirement applies to workers providing direct services in a client's home.
- NDIS Worker Screening Check: this is an NDIS-specific requirement. If your workers also deliver NDIS services, they need the NDIS Worker Screening Check for that work. The two checks are not interchangeable.
- Prohibited persons: under the Aged Care Act, certain findings in a National Police Check make a person a "prohibited" aged care worker. They cannot work in direct care roles.
Your provider registration does not automatically alert you when a worker's check expires. You need a system that tracks expiry dates and alerts you before the check lapses.
SIRS obligations from day one
The Serious Incident Response Scheme (SIRS) applies to approved aged care providers from the date they begin delivering services. There is no grace period.
Under SIRS, providers must:
- Report Priority 1 incidents to the ACQSC within 24 hours of becoming aware of the incident
- Report Priority 2 incidents within 30 days
- Maintain an internal incident register
- Take action to manage and prevent recurrence
Priority 1 incidents include unexpected deaths, serious injuries, sexual or physical assault, unexplained absences, and inappropriate use of restraint. Priority 2 incidents cover a broader range of adverse events including falls with injury, medication errors with harm, and financial abuse.
SIRS applies only to aged care funded services. If you are also an NDIS provider, NDIS incidents are reported to the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, not the ACQSC. The two schemes are separate.
Support at Home billing requirements
Under the Support at Home program (which replaced Home Care Packages on 1 July 2025), claims are made to Services Australia rather than managing an annual package budget.
Billing operates by service groups. The current service groups include:
- Independence supports
- Everyday living
- Social supports
- Clinical care
- Assistive technology, home modifications, and restorative care
Each client has a quarterly budget allocated across service groups based on their assessed need. When you deliver a service, you claim against the relevant service group. The system does not allow you to claim more than the allocated amount for a service group in the quarter.
For providers coming from a Home Care Package background: the quarterly service group model is more granular than the old package levels. Your rostering and billing systems need to track which service group each shift draws from, and your coordinators need visibility of remaining budget by service group when assigning shifts.
The 6-point software checklist
Before delivering your first service as an approved aged care provider, confirm your systems can do the following:
- 1.Record shifts per service group. Every visit or shift needs to be coded to the correct Support at Home service group at the time it is created or assigned. Retrospective coding at claim time creates errors.
- 1.Track National Police Checks with expiry alerts. The system needs to store the check date for each worker and alert coordinators before the three-year expiry. A worker with a lapsed check must not be rostered to direct care shifts.
- 1.Link incidents to shifts. When a SIRS-reportable incident occurs on a shift, your system needs to connect the incident record to the specific shift, client, and worker. This is the data you need for ACQSC reporting and for your internal register.
- 1.Continuity of care tracking. The Aged Care Quality Standards require providers to support continuity of care. Your system should show the care history for each client and flag when a new or infrequent worker is being assigned.
- 1.Qualification tracking. If you deliver clinical services under Standard 5, the system needs to verify that the worker assigned to a clinical shift holds the required qualifications.
- 1.Audit reporting. The ACQSC can conduct a quality review at any time after approval. Your system needs to produce an audit-ready report showing what services were delivered, by whom, when, and against which service group, for any requested period.
What good looks like on day one
An approved provider starting service delivery should have:
- ACQSC approval confirmed in writing
- A workforce with current National Police Checks recorded in the system with expiry dates
- A SIRS-compliant incident response procedure, tested before the first client
- Support at Home service group coding set up in the rostering and billing system
- A coordinator with visibility of each client's quarterly budget by service group
- A documented governance policy that matches what was submitted in the application
Starting service delivery before any of these items are in place puts your approval at risk and creates immediate compliance exposure.