The Sector Beat Its Care Minutes Target. One Home in Three Didn't — and for Metro Homes, That Sets This Quarter's Funding
The Sector Beat Its Care Minutes Target. One Home in Three Didn't — and for Metro Homes, That Sets This Quarter's Funding
The care minutes dashboard for April to June 2026 covers the first quarter of care delivered after supplement payments began — and under the department's six-month rule, it is the quarter that prices October to December.
The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing's care minutes dashboard for April to June 2026 opens with a reassuring pair of numbers. Residential aged care homes delivered an average of 221.24 care minutes per resident per day against an average target of 216.84. Registered nurse minutes came in at 48.29 against a target of 44.20. On average, the sector is compliant with more than four minutes to spare.
Averages are where finance people get into trouble. Of the 2,536 homes that reported, 1,682 met both targets. That is 66.32%, the highest in the dashboard's eight-quarter series and up from 63.72% in the March quarter. It also means 854 homes missed at least one target, and 277 missed both.
Until this year that was a compliance problem. For metropolitan homes it is now a revenue line, which is the change I wrote about in April when care funding was first tied to the roster. This dashboard is the first look at what happened next.
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221.24
Average care minutes delivered per resident per day, April to June 2026 — against an average target of 216.84
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66.32%
Homes meeting both the total and registered nurse targets — 1,682 of 2,536
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72.42%
Metropolitan homes meeting the total care minutes target — which leaves about 450 of 1,635 short
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$33.41
Maximum care minutes supplement per resident per day in the department's fact sheet, at the $295.64 AN-ACC price
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The six-month rule: why April to June is this quarter's money
The mechanism, briefly. For residential care homes in metropolitan areas (Modified Monash 1) without specialised homeless status, the Base Care Tariff fell from 0.5 to 0.387 of a National Weighted Activity Unit on 1 April 2026. The 0.113 difference moved into a care minutes supplement, paid automatically each month and scaled to how much of the care minutes targets a home delivered. Homes in regional, rural and remote areas are not affected.
The part that matters this week is the timing. The department's fact sheet states the rule in one sentence: "The relevant performance quarter is the quarter that commenced 6 months prior to the payment quarter." Its own example is that October to December 2025 performance determines the supplement payable for April, May and June 2026.
Apply the same rule one step further and April to June 2026 performance sets the supplement for October, November and December 2026. The numbers in this dashboard are not history. They are the rate metropolitan homes are being paid on right now, and the quarter you are in today is setting April to June 2027.
The department's rate table runs from $33.41 per resident per day when both targets are fully met down to nothing when both fall below 85%. Most of the money rides on total care minutes: a home that meets the total target but falls under 85% on registered nurse minutes still receives $30.45, while the reverse earns $2.96.
Near-misses cost real money too. The fact sheet's worked example is a home that delivered 99.09% of its total target and 95.55% of its registered nurse target, which earns $30.75 — $2.66 a day below the maximum. Across 100 occupied beds and a 92-day quarter that is about $24,500. A home under 85% on both forgoes roughly $307,000 for the same quarter.
Two cautions on those figures. They are calculated at the $295.64 AN-ACC price, and the price rose to $303.19 on 1 October, so check the department's current table for the rates applying to your payments. And when I first wrote about this in April I used $31.92 as the maximum, which was worked out at an earlier price; $33.41 is the department's figure.
Where the misses are
The dashboard breaks the result down far enough to see who is exposed. Among the 1,635 metropolitan homes, 72.42% met the total care minutes target and 68.26% met both. That leaves about 450 metropolitan homes short on the measure carrying most of the supplement, although homes with specialised homeless status sit outside the change.
The split by ownership is sharper. For-profit homes delivered an average of 219.21 minutes against an average target of 219.24, fractionally under; not-for-profit homes averaged 221.36 against 215.53. In metropolitan areas, 59.22% of the 694 for-profit homes met the total target, against 81.78% of the 922 not-for-profit homes.
The most useful chart is the one showing how far the misses fell short. Of the 720 homes that missed the total target, 317 were within five minutes and 508 were within ten. Only 27 were more than twenty minutes short. On registered nurse minutes, 272 of the 411 homes that missed were within two minutes.
So the typical miss is a near-miss, which is exactly the zone where a sliding scale turns small differences into dollars and measurement precision starts to matter. The department truncates each percentage to two decimal places rather than rounding it.
Why a minute costs more than it did
The other half of the calculation is what a minute costs to deliver, and that moved a long way before this quarter began. The department's Quarterly Financial Snapshot for the nine months to 31 March 2026 put median staff costs at $268.23 per resident per day, up 10.5% on a year earlier, while median staff time rose 1.9% to 239.23 minutes. Rate did most of that work, not volume: median base hourly rates rose 4.6% for registered nurses, 6.8% for enrolled nurses and 7.3% for personal care staff.
Agency was not the driver. The care minutes dashboard shows agency staff delivering 3.11% of total care minutes in April to June 2026, down from 4.84% in the September quarter of 2024.
Divide one median by the other and a minute of care staff time costs in the order of $1.12. Indicative only, but it frames the decision. Closing a five-minute gap costs something like $5.60 per resident per day. Whether that is more or less than the supplement a home forgoes depends on where its percentage sits in the department's table.
That is not an argument for choosing to miss a target. Care minutes are mandatory whatever the funding does. It is an argument for knowing what a shortfall costs before the payment arrives six months later. The wider cost and revenue picture is in last week's piece on occupancy and margin.
Four numbers to hold per home, per quarter
One: care minutes as a percentage of target. Total and registered nurse separately, per home. A group average hides the home that is at 96%.
Two: the supplement that percentage earns, in dollars, in the quarter it will be paid. Performance and payment sit six months apart. A forecast that books the supplement against the quarter it was earned in will be wrong twice.
Three: cost per care minute, split into rate and time. When the staff cost line moves, you want to know in the same glance which half moved.
Four: agency as a share of minutes and as a share of cost. The gap between the two is the premium being paid to reach the target.
None of this requires new systems. It requires the roster, the quarterly return and the revenue forecast to use the same quarter labels.
Where AI is useful here, and where it isn't
Tracking a percentage per home, per target, per quarter, and mapping each one to a payment period six months away is repetitive, rule-based and entirely checkable afterwards — the shape of work AI handles well. Point it at roster and timesheet exports and ask for quarter-to-date care minutes against target by home, a projection to quarter end, and a list of homes sitting close to the edge of a rate band.
What it should not do is decide what counts as a care minute. Which hours fall inside the definition is a classification judgement, and from this year an auditor signs off on it. That is the same boundary we drew around who writes variance commentary and who writes the reason: the tool produces the worklist, a person owns the call.
The audit arrives with this month's return
Starting with the 2025–26 Aged Care Financial Report, every residential provider must prepare a Care Minutes Performance Statement and have it audited by a registered company auditor before submitting it with the report. That return is due on 31 October, as we set out in the piece on this year's aged care reporting deadlines.
So the care minutes behind this dashboard are about to be audited for the first time, in the same month they start determining what metropolitan homes are paid. A figure that was once an operational statistic now has a funding consequence and an audit opinion attached. It belongs in the finance team's reconciliations, not only in the roster system.
Do you know what each home's care minutes result is worth in dollars, and which quarter it lands in?
Most reporting packs show care minutes as a compliance statistic and the supplement as a revenue line, with nothing joining the two. PFL provides senior-level outsourced finance, management reporting, and AI automation for Australian NFP, NDIS, and SME organisations — including building the per-home view that connects the roster to the revenue forecast.
Talk to PFL →- Department of Health, Disability and Ageing — Care minutes in residential aged care dashboard (April to June 2026)
- Department of Health, Disability and Ageing — Care minutes funding changes, April 2026: fact sheet
- Department of Health, Disability and Ageing — Quarterly Financial Snapshot of the aged care sector, Quarter 3 2025–26 (January to March 2026)
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