The Compliance rating is one of the four parts of the Overall Star Rating a family sees against a nursing home. We have written before about how the overall rating is put together. This is about the compliance quarter of it specifically, because it changed on 1 November 2025 and the change is not obvious from the star.
What the numbers look like nationally
| Compliance rating | Share of homes nationally |
|---|---|
| Excellent | 82 per cent |
| Good | 17 per cent |
| Acceptable | 0 per cent |
| Improvement needed | 0 per cent |
| Significant improvement needed | 0 per cent |
Those shares are My Aged Care's own, and it notes that percentages may not equal 100 per cent due to rounding. A rating where 99 per cent of the population sits in the top two bands cannot separate a good home from an ordinary one. It can only separate a home that has attracted regulatory action from one that has not, and on these figures very few have.
What the rating is built from
From 1 November 2025 the Compliance rating is calculated on two inputs:
graded assessment findings against the strengthened Quality Standards
and
new regulatory decisions by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission and the Department
of Health, Disability and Ageing, as the System Governor
. Where both apply, My Aged Care
says the rating is worked out
by identifying the lowest rating the aged care home qualifies for across both the
regulatory decision and graded assessment columns
, and where a home has more than one
decision against it the rating
will reflect the most serious decision and action that has been taken
.
| Stars | Regulatory decision | Graded assessment |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Civil penalties; compensation order for breach of statutory duty; compliance notice for significant failures or systemic patterns of conduct | Major non-conformance with one or more strengthened Quality Standards |
| 2 | Acceptance of an enforceable undertaking; Commission initiated conditions on registration | Minor non-conformance with one or more strengthened Quality Standards |
| 3 | Major or minor non-conformance resolved post-audit | |
| 4 | Conformance with all applicable strengthened Quality Standards | |
| 5 | Conformance, plus the Commission determines the home meets the additional criteria for the exceeding grade |
Read the right-hand column. Three, four and five stars all describe the result of an assessment. Only one and two stars can be reached without one.
The part that changes how you read the star
The assessments are not finished. My Aged Care says graded assessment against the
strengthened Quality Standards will be assessed by Commission audits over the first 3
years at the time of provider's registration renewal
. So the programme that produces the
three, four and five star findings is still working through the sector.
What happens in the meantime is stated plainly, and it is the sentence worth carrying into a nursing home tour:
Until an aged care home's first assessment against the strengthened Quality Standards, the aged care home's Compliance rating will be determined by:
the presence of any regulatory decisions
the period since a regulatory decision
the period of ownership of the home by the provider.
None of those three things is an assessment of care. They are a record of whether a regulator has acted, how long ago, and how long this provider has held the home. A home with no regulatory decision on file rates well because nothing has been recorded against it.
Our view, on the published method and the published spread: the Compliance rating is doing an honest job of what it measures, and what it measures is much narrower than the word compliance suggests to a family reading it. The 82 per cent is not evidence that Australian aged care is overwhelmingly excellent. It is evidence that regulatory decisions are rare and that most homes have not yet been through the new assessment. Those are different claims and only the second one is in the data.
How to tell which kind of rating you are looking at
There is a way to check, and it is easy to miss. My Aged Care says
Aged care homes will have an explanatory note below the Compliance rating to indicate when
they have been assessed against the strengthened Quality Standards
. If that note is
present, the star reflects an audit. If it is absent, the star reflects the absence of
regulatory action.
Two other things follow from the method. A rating can move when
the non-compliance is fixed
, so a low star is not permanent and its date matters. And
because the rating takes the lowest qualifying level across both columns, a home can be
assessed as conforming and still show a low star if a regulatory decision is current against
it. In that case the decision is the thing to ask about, not the star.
What we did not establish
My Aged Care does not put a date on the percentage table, and its pages carry a templated last-updated field rather than a fixed one, so we cannot tell you exactly when the 82 and 17 per cent were measured beyond the date we read them. We also cannot tell you what share of homes have completed a strengthened Standards assessment, because that figure is not on these pages, and it is the number that would say how much of the 82 per cent is an audited result. We have not estimated it.
How we worked this out
Read from My Aged Care's Compliance page, in the Checking quality of care section, on 29 August 2026, together with the Find a Provider entry point on the same site. Every percentage, star level, regulatory decision type and quoted phrase is My Aged Care's own, taken from the page text and its two published tables. We have reproduced the 0 per cent rows rather than dropping them, because their emptiness is the point. No provider, home or individual is named anywhere in this article, and nothing here asserts that any particular home has or has not been the subject of a regulatory decision. We have not contacted My Aged Care, the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission or the Department. The opinion offered is labelled as ours and rests on the published method and spread quoted above it.
Sources
- My Aged Care, Compliance (read 29 August 2026): the national spread of Compliance ratings including Excellent 82 per cent, Good 17 per cent and 0 per cent for each of Acceptable, Improvement needed and Significant improvement needed, with the note that percentages may not equal 100 per cent due to rounding; that from 1 November 2025 the rating is calculated on graded assessment findings against the strengthened Quality Standards and new regulatory decisions by the Commission and the System Governor; that the rating is the lowest level qualified for across both columns and reflects the most serious current decision; the five star levels and the regulatory decisions and assessment findings mapped to each; that graded assessment will be carried out by Commission audits over the first three years at registration renewal; that until a home's first assessment the rating is determined by the presence of any regulatory decisions, the period since a regulatory decision and the period of ownership; that an explanatory note appears below the rating when a home has been assessed; and that the rating updates when non-compliance is fixed.
- My Aged Care, Find a provider (read 29 August 2026): the consumer entry point at which these ratings are presented to families.
Spotted an error? The correction form is on our tips page; we check every correction against the cited source and log what changed.