National Aged Care Quality Indicators Q1 2026: The 6 Indicators, the 2,509-Home Data Drop, and the In-Home Expansion Every Provider Must Prepare For

On 17 July 2026, three working days ago, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare released the Q1 2026 National Aged Care Mandatory Quality Indicator Program report covering 1 January to 31 March 2026 data from 2,509 residential aged care homes. It is the first QI report of the new Aged Care Act era and the first to land alongside a confirmed in-home aged care QI Program in the pipeline. For residential providers, the six indicators are unchanged but the workflow expectations are not. For Support at Home and Commonwealth Home Support Programme providers, the report is a preview of the data set the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing is about to ask you to collect.

The Residential QI Program has been mandatory since 1 July 2019. It is the single most consistent source of national aged care quality data we have. The Q1 2026 release covers pressure injuries, restrictive practices, unplanned weight loss, falls and major injury, medication management (polypharmacy and antipsychotic use) and activities of daily living. Available data represents 99.5% of the 2,522 homes that received government subsidies in the quarter. The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing finalised the data on 11 May 2026 and supplied it to the AIHW the same day.

The same release window covers a consultation process the Department has been running since May 2024 on the establishment of a National Aged Care Mandatory Quality Indicator Program for in-home aged care services. The proposed program covers seven indicators, will begin 12 months after Support at Home implementation (that is, no earlier than 1 July 2026) and will apply to every registered Support at Home provider. This guide walks through what the Q1 2026 residential data tells us, what the in-home indicators will look like, and the four-step workflow residential and in-home providers should be running now.

What the Q1 2026 release actually contains

The Q1 2026 report is the seventh year of mandatory quarterly QI reporting for residential aged care. The data set is mature, the indicator definitions are stable, and the submission deadline (21 April 2026 for Q1) has not moved. What is new is the regulatory backdrop. The Aged Care Act 2024 commenced on 1 November 2025, the ACQSC Compliance and Enforcement Policy has applied since that date, and Star Ratings now incorporate QI data into the Quality Measures sub-category.

For residential boards and clinical governance leads, the report is the single best evidence base for the question: did we improve, hold, or regress against the national cohort over the quarter? The Department processes and checks the data before publishing, which means the numbers in the report are the numbers the regulator sees when assessing compliance and when calculating your Star Rating Quality Measures sub-rating.

• Six indicators reported quarterly: pressure injuries (six stages), restrictive practices (physical, mechanical, environmental, seclusion), unplanned weight loss (significant and consecutive), falls and major injury (fractures, dislocations, closed head injuries, subdural haematoma), medication management (polypharmacy of 9+ medications and antipsychotic use), and activities of daily living (Barthel Index decline).
• Coverage: 2,509 residential aged care homes submitted valid QI data by the 21 April 2026 deadline, representing 99.5% of the 2,522 homes that received Australian Government subsidies in the quarter.
• Submission timing: quarterly submission deadline is 21 days after quarter end, with data extracted by the Department in the month following submission and published approximately 75 days after quarter end.
• Reporting channel: QI data is submitted via the My Aged Care portal, paired with the Quarterly Financial Report for the three staffing QIs.

The six residential indicators, what they measure, and what they signal

Each of the six indicators is a leading indicator of clinical risk and a lagging indicator of care quality. They are the most-cited statistics in ACQSC site audit reports and the most frequent comparison set in resident and family decision-making. Treat them as a connected dashboard, not as six independent numbers.

• Pressure injuries. Reported across six stages (Stage 1 to Stage 4, Unstageable, Suspected Deep Tissue). Acquired-outside-the-home injuries are counted separately but still appear in the total. The national benchmark is under 5% combined prevalence for Stage 2 and above; anything persistently above that triggers a clinical governance review.
• Restrictive practices. Excludes chemical restraint. Captures physical, mechanical, environmental and seclusion. Recorded even where the resident or representative has consented. The Quality of Care Principles 2014 (Part 4A) require documentation. The QI records are a three-day audit window each quarter, varied and not disclosed in advance.
• Unplanned weight loss. Two sub-indicators: significant (5% or more comparing current to previous quarter finishing weights) and consecutive (every month over three consecutive months). Monthly weights are required, around the same time of day, in similar clothing.
• Falls and major injury. Single quarterly review of care records for every eligible resident. Falls count regardless of injury; falls resulting in major injury count separately. Major injury means bone fracture, joint dislocation, closed head injury with altered consciousness, or subdural haematoma.
• Medication management. Polypharmacy (nine or more medications as at the collection date) and antipsychotics (any antipsychotic administered in a seven-day assessment window). Residents prescribed antipsychotics for a diagnosed psychosis are counted separately but still appear in the antipsychotic total.
• Activities of daily living. Barthel Index of ADL, a 10-item staff-completed assessment covering personal hygiene, dressing, toileting and eating. Reflects resident performance in the 24 to 48 hours prior to assessment. Decline is the trigger.

The four statistics every board should read first

The Q1 2026 report does not break down by provider, but it does break down by jurisdiction and by home size, and the cohort numbers are large enough that the distribution is the most useful benchmarking signal you will see all year. Read these four numbers before any other section.

• 99.5% submission coverage across 2,509 of 2,522 subsidised homes. The remaining 13 homes were excluded for late or absent submission. This is your reminder that the 21-day deadline is hard. Lateness is treated as a non-reportable, not a zero.
• Restrictive practices remain the highest-volume indicator. More than half of all Australian residential aged care homes continue to record at least one restrictive practice in the three-day audit window. The Quality of Care Principles 2014 restrict these to last resort, and any rate above 10% in your internal data warrants a behaviour support plan review.
• Polypharmacy has plateaued, not declined. Roughly 40% of residents are on nine or more medications nationally. The Royal Commission found this was a primary driver of chemical restraint risk. The plateau is the story, not a decline.
• ADL decline runs at one in five residents. Across the national cohort, approximately 20% of residents experience a Barthel Index decline in a quarter. Your internal rate should sit below that. If it is sitting above 25%, your care planning and re-enablement workflow is the first place to look.

The in-home QI Program: seven indicators, the Support at Home timing rule, and what changes

The Department's 2024 consultation paper, the subsequent sector submissions, and the 2025-26 aged care reform milestones all converge on the same conclusion: a National Aged Care Mandatory Quality Indicator Program for in-home aged care services will be implemented 12 months after Support at Home (that is, no earlier than 1 July 2026). The Department has confirmed the program will apply to every registered Support at Home provider. The implementation date is the part that is still firming up, but the indicator list has been stable since the 2024 consultation and is unlikely to change substantively.

The proposed in-home indicators are:

• Consumer experience. Measured against an agreed instrument (likely a derivative of the existing aged care consumer experience surveys used in residential).
• Quality of life. Quality-of-life tool, possibly the EQ-5D-5L or the ASCOT, applied at assessment and re-assessment.
• Function. ADL and instrumental ADL change between assessment points.
• Service delivery and care planning. Plan-to-delivery match: does what the provider delivers match the assessed and approved care plan?
• Workforce. Continuity of worker, registered nurse access, and missed-visit rates.
• Weight loss and nutrition. Monthly weight tracking where clinically indicated; nutrition risk screening at each re-assessment.
• Falls, fractures and injury. Falls in the home, hospitalisation for falls, and major injury rates.

The Department has signalled that only a small number of indicators will be implemented initially — between one and three — and that data will be collected for a period before any decision to expand the program or publish the data. This is the same staged-implementation pattern the residential program followed when it began in 2019 with pressure injuries and physical restraint only.

The four-step workflow every provider should be running now

Whether you run residential, in-home or both, the QI Program is moving from a once-a-quarter submission chore to an always-on clinical and operational evidence pipeline. The four steps below are what we see working in NovoCove customer environments and what the ACQSC, the AIHW and the Department expect when they read your data.

1. Map the indicators to a single resident or participant record

Pressure injuries, restrictive practices, weight, falls, medications, ADL and (for in-home) function, consumer experience and care plan delivery all live in different systems today. The first workflow step is to make one record the source of truth for one person, so that every quarterly submission is a derived report, not a manual re-keying exercise. The Q1 2026 deadline is 21 April. If you are still building the QI submission by exporting from three systems on 18 April, you are one staff member's sick day away from a missed deadline and a 0% in your annual submission rate.

2. Capture the data at the point of care, not at the end of the quarter

The restrictive practices QI is a three-day audit window, varied each quarter and not disclosed in advance. Polypharmacy is a single-day medication chart review. Falls and major injury are a single quarterly review of care records. ADL decline is a 24 to 48 hour window. None of these are end-of-quarter exercises. Every one of them is captured at the point of care and aggregated quarterly. If your current process is to recall three days of records at quarter end, you are using memory as your data warehouse, and the ACQSC Quality Standards expect documented evidence, not memory.

3. Reconcile your QI submission with your QFR and Star Ratings data

The three staffing-related QIs are sourced from the Quarterly Financial Report. The Falls and Major Injury and the Activities of Daily Living QIs feed the Star Ratings Quality Measures sub-category. If your QI submission, your QFR and your published Star Rating disagree on enrolled nurse hours, you will be asked to explain the discrepancy at audit. Build the reconciliation into the submission workflow, not after it.

4. Prepare the in-home baseline now

For Support at Home and CHSP providers, the in-home QI Program is a 12-to-18 month runway. Use that runway. Start with consumer experience (a one-page survey after each visit), function (ADL change between assessment and re-assessment) and falls (a single line in the visit note). The data set you build today is the baseline that the Department will compare you against when reporting goes live. A baseline of zero is much harder to defend than a baseline of low-but-improving.

How NovoCove handles this

NovoCove maps the six residential QI indicators and the seven proposed in-home indicators to a single resident or participant record, with point-of-care capture for pressure injuries, restrictive practices, weight, falls, medications, ADL, consumer experience and function. Quarterly submission is a derived report, not a manual re-build. The platform reconciles QI, QFR and Star Ratings data so the Quality Measures sub-rating, the QI Program report and your ACQSC evidence pack are all reading from the same numbers.

For in-home providers, NovoCove builds the consumer experience, function and falls baseline today using the visit notes your team is already writing, with no extra data entry. When the Department finalises the indicator list and the reporting cadence, the baseline is already there. For residential providers, the QI Program evidence is built from the same clinical observations that feed your care plans, your medication charts and your incident management workflow, so submitting Q1 each year is the natural output of the quarter, not a separate project.

This is the workflow the AIHW, the Department and the ACQSC expect. It is also the workflow that scales when the indicator list grows — which it will, because the in-home Program is following the same staged implementation as residential and will add new indicators in the same way.

This guide is general information and is not legal advice.