A law passed in 2024 promised 215 minutes of care a day to Australia’s aged care residents.

However, providers are dodging their responsibility by counting laundry, cleaning and catering work as care minutes.

Also, providers measure care minutes as a facility-wide daily average, which allows a nursing home to meet its target on paper while residents go without safe staffing on certain shifts.

NSWNMA Assistant General Secretary Katrina Bough says that the law must ensure residents get the care they are legally entitled to every day, on every shift.

“The government must legislate the existing 215-minutes standard as a mandated staffing ratio of direct care time that applies on every shift,” she said.

“The care minutes requirement must be translated into minimum staffing numbers for each shift, based on the residents in the home and their care needs, as set out in the Aged Care Rules using the same methodology that already produces the 215-minute target.

“This method would count only the RNs, ENs and AINs actually rostered and present on each shift.

“The provider would not be able to average staff numbers across wings, units or the whole facility in order to disguise a short-staffed shift elsewhere.”

Katrina said ratios won’t cost the government any more than what it already pays providers.