When a home can be found non-compliant and still show five stars for Compliance on My Aged Care, the system – not just the service – deserves scrutiny.
This isn’t a story about one provider’s failings. It’s about whether the Government’s Star Ratings are fit for purpose – particularly the Compliance score older Australians rely on.
In April 2025, assessors at a Victorian home observed unsafe manual handling of two residents and low completion rates for mandatory training and annual reviews. The operator committed to fix the issues, but the Commission found Standard 7 (Human Resources) was not met. In May, the home was nevertheless re-accredited for three years, and by July the non-compliance was marked rectified.
Open My Aged Care today and you’ll see the same home displaying 5 stars for Compliance – while its listing says, “rating most recently updated on 16 December 2022.”
Not an isolated glitch
It’s not an isolated concern. Earlier this month, a Disability SA Northgate service received 5 stars for Compliance despite assessors identifying inappropriate use of physical restraint.
Under the regulator’s risk-based approach, a home can still show five stars for Compliance even if it has not initially met every Quality Standard – provided the Commission judges the residual risk to be low and remediation is underway. But does it pass the pub test?
Criticism of Star Ratings isn’t new. In January 2024, Dr Rodney Jilek argued the system is not useful to consumers in homes failing Standards can still display 5-star Compliance. The Commonwealth Ombudsman, Iain Anderson, has also warned the ratings are not “sufficiently meaningful” – noting cases where non-compliance persisted “for an extended period” without any visible change to a home’s stars.
The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing hired Allen + Clarke to review Star Ratings and KPMG to run consultations. The outcome this year: to get 3 stars for Staffing, homes must now meet both overall and RN care-minute targets. Yet no changes were made to Compliance, the category drawing the strongest criticism.
The data lag problem
The Inspector-General of Aged Care, Natalie Siegel-Brown, recently summed it up in her report on the Implementation of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety:
“Despite iterative enhancements since its inception, a range of well-documented shortcomings continue to undermine the effectiveness of star ratings in distilling useful information to older Australians about the performance of aged care homes. Many of these relate to the design of the system, including the methodology for calculating ratings, especially in respect of the compliance and staffing ratings.”
Add with entries displaying years-old dates, and it's no wonder consumers are receiving mixed signals.
The bottom line: if Compliance can show five stars while recent risks are buried in the fine print – or yet to be updated – the system risks misleading families when they most need clarity. Is it time for real-time updates – and clearer explanations of what a five-star Compliance score actually means?
