How to Prepare for Aged Care Quality Standards Audits
Preparing for an ACQS audit can feel overwhelming for many aged care providers.
Whether you are undergoing your first registration audit under the new Aged Care Act or preparing for a renewal of registration audit, the process requires clear documentation, structured evidence, and strong alignment with the strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards.
Auditors expect providers to demonstrate that their systems, policies, and operational practices meet the regulatory requirements set by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission.
This guide provides a comprehensive ACQS audit checklist to help providers prepare for audits with confidence.
In this guide you will learn:
In this guide you will learn:
When registration, renewal, and variation audits apply
The documentation auditors typically review
Common non-conformances providers encounter
A practical checklist to prepare for your audit
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What is an ACQS Audit?
An ACQS audit is an independent assessment carried out by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission to determine whether a provider conforms with the strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards, which came into effect under the new Aged Care Act on 1 November 2025.
Audits form part of the provider registration model. The Commission conducts an audit when an organisation applies to become a registered provider in registration categories 4, 5 or 6, when a registered provider applies to renew their registration in those categories, or when a provider applies to vary their registration to add one of those categories.
Audits are forward-looking. Assessors are not only checking whether documentation exists today, but whether the provider's systems and processes are effective enough to continuously improve and sustain conformance with the strengthened Quality Standards over time.
During the audit, quality assessors review policies, procedures, operational records, clinical documentation, and supporting evidence across each applicable Standard and its outcomes. Providers receive a graded rating against every outcome, and the overall rating for each Standard is based on those outcome ratings.
Audit results are published on the Commission's Find a Report page, so audit performance is visible to older people, families, and the wider sector.
Registration, Renewal and Variation Audits: When Does an ACQS Audit Apply?
The audits your organisation undergoes depend on your registration categories under the new Aged Care Act.
The strengthened Quality Standards and the audit process apply to providers registered in categories 4, 5 and 6. These categories cover services such as personal care and care management in the home or community, nursing and transition care, and residential aged care.
Providers registered only in categories 1, 2 and 3 are not audited against the strengthened Quality Standards, but they remain subject to other obligations under the Act, including the Code of Conduct and the Statement of Rights.
Audits follow three stages. During audit initiation, the Commission contacts you to begin the process, requests key documents, and explains what to expect. During audit delivery, assessors collect and assess evidence of how you conform with the outcomes of each applicable Standard, including through site visits, interviews with staff and older people, and document review.
During audit reporting, the Commission issues its findings and ratings, and identifies any non-conformance that requires corrective action.
Understanding which Standards and outcomes apply to your registration categories is the first step in ACQS audit preparation.
The Commission's Strengthened Quality Standards guidance tool lets you filter requirements by service category and whether clinical care applies to your service.
The ACQS Audit Checklist: Every Standard You Need to Cover
This ACQS provider checklist covers the key areas quality assessors review when assessing conformance with the strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards. Work through each section ahead of your audit to identify gaps early and give your team time to address them properly.
Standard 1: The Person
Standard 1 underpins every other Standard. Assessors look for evidence that older people are treated with dignity and respect, that their identity, culture and diversity are valued, and that care is built around individual choice and independence.
Your ACQS compliance checklist for Standard 1 should include:
Evidence that care planning reflects each person's needs, goals and preferences
Documented processes for supporting choice, dignity of risk, and independence
Consent documentation and supported decision-making records
Privacy and confidentiality policies and evidence of implementation
Evidence that the Statement of Rights is understood and applied by staff
Culturally safe care practices, including for First Nations people and people from diverse backgrounds
Assessors frequently test this Standard by speaking directly with older people and their families about their experience of care, so documented practice needs to match lived experience.
Standard 2: The Organisation
Standard 2 holds the governing body accountable for the delivery of quality care. Governance is one of the most closely scrutinised areas in an ACQS audit, and accountability sits explicitly with the board or governing body, not just management.
Documentation to prepare includes:
Documented governance structure with clear accountability to the governing body
Quality system documentation and evidence of governing body oversight
A current risk management framework and risk registers
Incident management system documentation, including SIRS reportable incident records
Complaints and feedback management processes with evidence of action taken
Workforce planning, training records, and worker screening documentation
Emergency and disaster management plans with review history
Continuous improvement plans with evidence of implementation
Governance documentation needs to demonstrate that the governing body is actively engaged in overseeing quality and safety, not just nominally accountable for it.
Standard 3: Care and Services
Standard 3 describes how care and services must be assessed, planned, delivered, and reviewed. This is where assessors examine day-to-day service delivery in detail.
Your documentation should include:
Assessment and care planning records for each older person
Evidence that care plans are current, reviewed, and reflect changing needs
Service delivery records that align with documented care plans
Communication records between the provider, older people, families, and other services
Evidence of coordination with other providers and health services where relevant
Care records should be accurate, complete, consistently maintained, and stored securely. Inconsistency between what care plans say and what delivery records show is one of the most common sources of non-conformance.
Standard 4: The Environment
Standard 4 covers the environment in which care and services are delivered, whether that is a residential service or an older person's home.
Auditors may review:
Environmental safety assessments and hazard management records
Infection prevention and control documentation
Equipment maintenance and cleaning records
Evidence that the service environment supports independence, function, and wellbeing
For home and community providers, this includes documented processes for identifying and managing risks in the environments where services are delivered.
Standard 5: Clinical Care
For providers delivering clinical care, Standard 5 is among the most detailed and demanding areas of an ACQS audit. It draws on the expertise of the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care and sets clear expectations for clinical governance.
Documentation assessors typically review includes:
A clinical governance framework with defined accountability
Clinical assessment, care planning, and monitoring records
Medication management documentation
Restrictive practices records, including authorisation, monitoring, and review, and evidence of working toward elimination
Wound care, falls, pain, continence, and nutrition-related clinical records where relevant
Deterioration recognition and escalation processes
Antimicrobial stewardship and infection control documentation
Restrictive practices documentation carries significant consequences when it is incomplete. If your service uses any restrictive practice, ensure authorisation, consent, behaviour support documentation, and review records are complete and accessible before your audit date.
Standard 6: Food and Nutrition
Standard 6 applies to residential care providers and sets expectations for food, drink, and the dining experience.
Your checklist should include:
Menu planning documentation with dietitian input
Individual dietary needs assessments and documented preferences
Records of swallowing and nutrition risk assessments
Evidence of partnering with older people on food and dining choices
Food safety documentation
Standard 7: The Residential Community
Standard 7 applies to residential care and focuses on daily living, security of accommodation, and the residential community experience.
Documentation to prepare includes:
Evidence that older people can maintain relationships, community connection, and activities that matter to them
Lifestyle and activity planning records
Documentation of how the service supports a sense of safety, belonging, and inclusion
Security of tenure and accommodation agreement documentation
Common ACQS Audit Non-Conformances to Address Before Your Audit
Understanding what commonly goes wrong in ACQS audits helps providers prioritise their preparation. When the Commission identifies minor or major non-conformance, providers are required to take action to achieve conformance, and the regulatory response is proportionate to the risk to older people.
The most frequently identified non-conformances include:
Governance accountability that exists on paper only. Governing body oversight of quality and safety is stated in policy but not demonstrated through meeting records, reporting, or documented review activity.
Care plans that don't match delivered care. Assessment and planning documentation exists, but progress notes and delivery records don't align with it, or plans haven't been updated as needs changed.
Incomplete clinical documentation. Medication records, deterioration escalation, or clinical monitoring documentation has gaps that only become visible when an assessor traces an individual person's care.
Restrictive practices gaps. Authorisation, consent, behaviour support plans, or review records are incomplete, or there is no documented evidence of working toward reducing and eliminating restrictive practices.
Incident management follow-through. Incidents and SIRS reportable incidents are recorded, but investigation, corrective action, and pattern review evidence is missing or inconsistent.
Workforce records managed inconsistently. Training is completed but not documented centrally, or worker screening records are incomplete across the workforce.
Fragmented evidence across multiple systems. Evidence exists but is spread across folders, spreadsheets, and disconnected platforms, making it difficult to present coherently against each Standard and outcome during an audit.
Addressing these areas before your audit significantly improves the likelihood of strong outcome ratings and reduces the risk of corrective action requirements after the assessment.
Understanding the ACQS Compliance Framework
The strengthened Quality Standards follow a structured framework that quality assessors use when assessing providers. Understanding this structure helps teams organise their evidence and documentation in a way that maps clearly to audit expectations.
The framework follows this hierarchy:
Standard
Outcome
Action
Evidence
Rating
Response
Each of the seven strengthened Quality Standards contains a set of outcomes, and each outcome contains actions that describe what conformance looks like in practice. Assessors rate providers against every applicable outcome, and the overall rating for each Standard is built from those outcome ratings.
In practice, this means providers need to be able to demonstrate that their policies, operational processes, and documentation align with each outcome and action applicable to their registration categories, and that evidence of implementation is accessible and current.
For a detailed breakdown of the Standards, outcomes, and actions relevant to your services, the Strengthened Quality Standards guidance published by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission is the authoritative reference.
How Compliance Software Helps With ACQS Audits
Many providers manage ACQS compliance requirements using spreadsheets, shared folders, and manual tracking systems. For smaller providers delivering a narrow range of services, this can work. For providers operating across multiple registration categories, multiple services, or residential and home care settings, it tends to break down.
Dedicated ACQS compliance software gives providers a structured way to manage the full compliance workload, including evidence management, policy governance, incident tracking, action management, and audit preparation, in one connected environment.
Key capabilities that support ACQS audit preparation include:
Evidence centralisation. Bring documentation from existing systems together into one compliance environment, so evidence is accessible and structured when assessors ask for it.
Evidence centralisation. Bring documentation from existing systems together into one compliance environment, so evidence is accessible and structured when assessors ask for it.
Evidence centralisation. Bring documentation from existing systems together into one compliance environment, so evidence is accessible and structured when assessors ask for it.
Action tracking. Convert compliance gaps into tracked actions with owners, due dates, and evidence links, so remediation is managed and documented.
Audit pack generation. Compile evidence, assessments, and action records into structured audit packs that can be shared with quality assessors efficiently.
ACQS Audit Checklist: Preparation for Multi-Service Providers
Providers operating across multiple services or locations face an additional layer of complexity in audit preparation. Evidence standards, policy implementation, and clinical documentation need to be consistent across every service, not just at the location an assessor happens to visit.
Common challenges for multi-service aged care providers include:
Inconsistent documentation practices across services and locations
Difficulty confirming that all services have current, reviewed policies
Workforce compliance and training records that are managed locally rather than centrally
Clinical governance visibility that varies from service to service
No single view of compliance status across the organisation
Multi-service providers benefit most from structured compliance platforms that provide service-level visibility alongside organisation-wide reporting, so the governing body can identify where compliance is strong and where it needs attention before an audit reveals it.
After the Audit: Managing Non-Conformance and Corrective Actions
Receiving a non-conformance finding during an ACQS audit does not automatically mean a negative outcome. What matters is how the organisation responds.
When non-conformance is identified, providers are required to take action to achieve conformance, and the Commission's response is proportionate to the risk faced by older people. Providers typically need to implement corrective actions and provide evidence demonstrating that the issues have been addressed, including any risks to the safety, health, and wellbeing of older people.
The quality of the corrective action response, including the documentation provided and the systemic changes made, shapes the ongoing regulatory relationship. Because audit results are published, follow-through also matters for the organisation's public standing.
Managing corrective actions through structured incident management or dedicated aged care compliance software gives providers a more organised way to track remediation, link evidence to specific findings, and demonstrate follow-through to the Commission.
How Often Do Aged Care Providers Undergo ACQS Audits?
Providers in registration categories 4, 5 and 6 undergo audits at initial registration and at renewal of registration, as well as when varying their registration to add those categories.
The Commission also monitors providers between audits through site visits, complaints handling, SIRS reporting, and other regulatory activity, so audit conformance is never the only touchpoint.
Providers should not treat audits as isolated events. Maintaining continuous conformance with the strengthened Quality Standards means the documentation, evidence, and governance systems required for a successful audit are in place year-round, not assembled under pressure when a renewal date approaches.
For a broader picture of how compliance management works across aged care and other regulated care environments, see our SIRS reporting software, or explore our guide to the strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards.
Related Compliance Resources
You may also find these resources helpful:
ACQS Compliance Software
ACQS 2025 Explained
Aged Care Compliance Software
NDIS Audit Checklist
Healthcare Compliance Frameworks
Download the NDIS Audit Preparation Checklist
Working through audit preparation without a structured checklist is harder than it needs to be. Download the free NDIS compliance checklist to get a practical, organised reference covering every key area auditors review, from governance and workforce compliance to incident management and participant documentation.
The checklist covers:
Governance preparation
Compliance documentation
Workforce requirements
Incident management processes
Participant record management
