Care Minutes in Aged Care: The Complete 2025 Guide to 215 Minutes Compliance
Compliance
5 August 2026
As of October 1, 2024, Australian residential aged care providers must deliver a mandatory sector-wide average of 215 minutes of direct care per resident per day, including 44 minutes from a Registered Nurse. This comprehensive guide covers everything providers need to know about calculating, reporting, and complying with care minutes requirements.
The numbers are straightforward. 215 minutes of direct care per resident per day, including 44 minutes from a Registered Nurse. What trips up many providers isn't the targets themselves, but the mechanics of turning those sector-wide averages into facility-level calculations that hold up under regulatory scrutiny.
This page covers exactly how to calculate your care minutes requirement, what counts toward the total, and how the 24/7 RN obligation fits alongside the minute targets.
For the full compliance picture (including reporting obligations, enforcement approach, workforce planning, and how care minutes connect to your Star Rating), see our care minutes compliance guide.
What You're Calculating Toward
Since 1 October 2024, residential aged care providers must meet a sector-wide average of 215 minutes of direct care per resident per day, including 44 minutes from a Registered Nurse. This is set out in section 176-20 of the Aged Care Rules 2025.
The 44-minute RN target has a small flex provision: up to 10% of that target can be delivered by an Enrolled Nurse. In practice, that means a minimum of ~39.6 minutes must be provided by an RN. This adjustment was introduced to recognise RN workforce pressures, particularly in regional and rural areas.
Each facility has its own individual target, calculated from the AN-ACC classifications of its residents. Higher-acuity residents attract a higher facility-level target. The 215/44 figures represent the sector-wide average from which individual targets are derived.
What Counts as Direct Care
Getting this boundary wrong is where most calculation errors begin.
Counts toward care minutes:
Personal care (bathing, dressing, grooming, toileting)
Mobility assistance and transfers
Medication administration
Wound care and clinical interventions
Meal assistance and feeding support
Social and emotional support delivered as part of a care activity
Allied health professionals delivering direct care to residents
Does not count:
Documentation and care planning
Handovers and shift briefings
Travel time between residents
Supervision of other staff
Cleaning, laundry, and domestic services
Administrative and management duties
Training and professional development time
The Department of Health and Aged Care's care minutes guide (Section 4) sets out the full list of qualifying activities. If you're unsure whether a specific activity counts, use that as your primary reference, not internal policy documents or informal interpretations.
Calculating Your Facility's Requirement
Your calculation is based on occupied bed days, not licensed beds. Residents on long-term leave (as defined in the Aged Care Rules 2025) are excluded.
Step 1: Establish your facility-level target
Your individual target is published by the Department and updated each quarter based on your residents' AN-ACC classifications. Access your current target through the My Aged Care Service and Support Portal.
Step 2: Calculate total required minutes per quarter
Multiply your daily target by the number of occupied resident days in the quarter.
Worked example — 60-bed facility:
Using the sector-wide average figures as an illustration:
Total care required: 60 residents × 215 minutes × 91 days = 1,173,900 minutes per quarter (approximately 19,565 hours)
RN care required: 60 residents × 44 minutes × 91 days = 240,240 minutes per quarter (approximately 4,004 hours)
In daily terms: 60 × 215 = 12,900 minutes (215 hours) of total direct care per day, of which 60 × 44 = 2,640 minutes (44 hours) must come from an RN.
This is a useful planning reference. Your actual quarterly requirement is based on your published facility target and actual occupied resident days, not the sector average.
Step 3: Convert to workforce hours
Divide total required minutes by 60 to convert to hours. Then plan rostered direct care hours to meet (and ideally exceed) this figure to absorb leave, vacancies, and fluctuations.
The 24/7 RN Requirement: Separate from the Minute Target
The 44-minute RN target and the 24/7 RN requirement are two distinct obligations. Both apply.
Since 1 July 2023, providers must have a Registered Nurse on-site at all times. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is a presence requirement, not a care delivery target. An RN on a night shift who delivers fewer than 44 minutes of direct care still satisfies the 24/7 obligation for those hours, but the facility still needs to meet its RN minute target across the day.
Key practical points:
The RN must be physically on-site, not on-call from home
Coverage must be continuous. Gaps during handovers can constitute non-compliance
Facilities spanning multiple buildings need the RN to be accessible across the whole service
One unplanned sick day without cover creates a breach; build roster redundancy accordingly
How Care Minutes Are Reported
Your care minutes are drawn from the hours you report in the Quarterly Financial Report (QFR), separated by staff category: RNs, ENs, PCWs and AINs. The Department passes this data to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission to support its regulatory work.
From the 2025–26 financial year, providers must also prepare and submit an externally audited Care Minutes Performance Statement. This is a material increase in accountability, significantly raising the stakes for data accuracy.
Calculate Your Requirement
Use Willow's free Care Minutes Calculator to check whether your facility meets both the 215-minute total and the 44-minute RN target, including the 24/7 RN obligation.
For everything beyond the numbers (reporting, enforcement, workforce planning, and care quality outcomes) read the full care minutes compliance guide.
Willow's aged care compliance software connects your workforce data to compliance reporting, so you don't discover a shortfall after the QFR is due. If you want to see how it works for your organisation, book a call.
Written by
James Driscoll
Writer
Community Manager for Willow , heywillow.ai. Helping healthcare, aged care, and NDIS providers ditch the compliance spreadsheets for AI-powered intelligence.
Frequently asked questions
Where do I find my facility's specific target?
What if our facility target is higher than 215 minutes?
Does respite care count in the calculation?
Can agency staff hours count toward our minutes?
Does the 215-minute target apply to every resident individually?
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