Aged Care Act 2024: What Compliance Software Actually Needs to Do

The Aged Care Act 2024 came into force in 2025 and is now being actively enforced. For providers, it's not just a new set of rules — it's a fundamental rewrite of what compliance means in aged care. Penalties reach $1.58M per offence, with criminal charges for serious breaches.

Most compliance software on the Australian market was designed for financial services, healthcare administration, or generic GRC. Aged care is now a category of its own, and the software has to follow. Here's what your aged care compliance platform must do in 2026.

1. Care Minutes Tracking (215 minutes/day)

Every resident must receive a minimum of 215 care minutes per day, broken down into registered nurse minutes and PCW/assistant-in-nursing minutes. This is a hard, auditable number — not a guideline.

What compliance software must do:

• Track care minutes by staff member, by shift, by resident
• Roll up to facility, region, and organisation level
• Generate quarterly care minutes reports in the format ACQSC requires
• Flag shifts where staffing falls short of the 215-minute requirement
• Maintain a timestamped audit trail of every care minute claimed

2. 24/7 Registered Nurse Coverage

A registered nurse must be on site at every residential aged care facility at all times. This is an enforceable requirement with personal liability implications for approved providers.

What compliance software must do:

• Track every RN shift and cross-reference against required coverage windows
• Flag any shift where the 24/7 requirement is not met (planned or actual)
• Maintain AHPRA registration currency for every RN on the roster
• Trigger immediate alerts when an RN's AHPRA registration is suspended or has conditions

3. SIRS — Serious Incident Response Scheme

SIRS requires providers to report, investigate, and respond to serious incidents within strict timeframes. The list of reportable incidents has expanded under the new Act, and the documentation requirements are heavier.

What compliance software must do:

• Provide a structured SIRS incident form (not just a free-text field)
• Trigger the right reporting workflow based on incident classification (Priority 1 vs 2 vs 3)
• Track time-to-report against regulatory deadlines
• Maintain a full investigation log with linked evidence, witness statements, and corrective actions
• Generate the quarterly SIRS report for the Commission automatically

4. Strengthened Quality Standards

The new standards are organised differently to the old ones. They're built around seven Quality Statements, each with multiple Outcomes and Actions. Self-assessment and evidence gathering happen at the Action level.

What compliance software must do:

• Map your existing evidence (policies, training records, audits, resident feedback) to the new Quality Statements
• Identify gaps where you have Actions but no linked evidence
• Generate self-assessment reports in the format ACQSC expects
• Maintain a continuous-improvement log per Quality Statement

5. Staff Credential Tracking — The Underrated One

Aged care has the highest staff credential complexity of any care sector in Australia. A single registered nurse may need to maintain:

• Current AHPRA registration (with no conditions or notations)
• National Police Check (renewed every 3 years in most states)
• NDIS Worker Screening (if supporting participants with NDIS plans)
• Annual CPD hours as required by AHPRA
• Manual Handling Certificate (state-specific)
• Food Safety Supervisor (if involved in kitchen work)
• Dementia Care training (increasingly required)
• Palliative Care training (for specialist roles)
• First Aid + CPR (HLTAID009 annually, HLTAID011 every 3 years)

For a 100-bed facility with 130 staff, that's potentially 1,000+ individual records to track — and one missed AHPRA renewal is a critical incident under the new Act.

6. Code of Conduct and Governance

The new Act introduces a statutory Code of Conduct for aged care workers and a Statement of Rights for older Australians. Both need to be acknowledged by every staff member and every resident (or their representative).

What compliance software must do:

• Track Code of Conduct acknowledgements per staff member, with timestamp and version
• Track Statement of Rights acknowledgements per resident, with version control
• Flag anyone who hasn't acknowledged the current version within 30 days of a change

7. Reporting and Audit Trail

The Aged Care Act 2024 raises the bar on what the Commission can request — and the timeframe in which they can request it. A 7-year audit log is now effectively the minimum.

What compliance software must do:

• Immutable audit log of every action, change, and report run (minimum 7 years)
• One-click export of an evidence pack for a specific resident, shift, staff member, or quality statement
• Export format that satisfies the Commission's information request template

What NovoCove Does Differently

NovoCove is built from the ground up for Australian aged care under the 2024 Act:

• Care minutes tracking by staff member, by shift, by resident — with rollup reporting
• 24/7 RN coverage monitoring with real-time gap alerts
• SIRS incident reporting with the exact workflow ACQSC expects
• Pre-mapped Quality Statements → Outcomes → Actions structure
• 90+ pre-configured aged care credential types with renewal rules
• AHPRA live-status monitoring with instant alerts on suspension or conditions
• Code of Conduct and Statement of Rights acknowledgement tracking
• 7-year audit log as standard on the Professional plan and above

We don't try to be everything to every sector. We're aged care and childcare, end to end, and that's where our focus is.

This guide is general information and is not legal advice.