Data and coverage
We use the GEN Aged Care Service List (30 June 2025) for home names, addresses, operators and resident places. These records form the directory and supply the home and bed counts shown on provider and location pages.
We use the published Star Ratings data for the overall rating and four sub-ratings. This is a separate dataset: a service appearing in the GEN list does not necessarily have a complete set of ratings.
We use the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 2021 Urban Centres and Localities boundaries to group homes into cities and towns. Each home’s coordinates are matched to a boundary; where no usable boundary matches, we use its recorded suburb. These groups determine which homes appear together on town pages and contribute to their local averages. ABS geography does not change an individual home’s Index score.
At the 16 September 2026 refresh, the Elderberry database contained 2,590 residential aged care homes associated with 708 operators. Of those homes, 2,366 had all four inputs needed for an Index score. The remaining 224 were listed without an Index. These figures describe Elderberry’s stored directory, rather than a census of every service operating today.
The directory records identify their service-list version as 30 June 2025. The ratings on every page come from the Star Ratings quarterly data extract, August 2026 (published 7 August 2026; 2,600 services). Each home is joined to its extract row by service name, suburb and state, because the extract carries no service identifier: 2,508 homes matched on the exact name, 8 on a checked name variant under the same provider, and 74 could not be matched and are listed without an Index. The extract records 0 where a Quality Measures rating does not exist yet; we treat 0 as no rating, never as a score.
Every extract we have loaded is kept in full, and each home keeps one ratings row per extract, so a rating can be traced to its source row and its history shown. A new government release does not refresh this site by itself; the refresh is a checked import that records the extract, its checksum and every match. For a home’s current official rating and regulatory information, use My Aged Care’s Find a provider.
Sources: GEN service list, 30 June 2025; Star Ratings extract, August 2026; ABS 2021 Urban Centres and Localities boundaries (ASGS Edition 3).
The Index calculation
Each input is an already-published sub-rating from one to five stars. We multiply each sub-rating by its weight and add the four results. The weights are the government’s published weights. Elderberry has not developed a separate set of weights through consumer research or editorial assessment.
| Factor | Weight |
|---|---|
| Residents’ experience | 33% |
| Compliance | 30% |
| Staffing | 22% |
| Quality measures | 15% |
For example, inputs of 5, 4, 2 and 3 respectively produce 1.65 + 1.20 + 0.44 + 0.45 = 3.74 out of 5. This is an illustrative calculation. The possible range is 1.00 to 5.00, and the Index is displayed to two decimal places.
The Index and the official overall rating
The government’s overall Star Rating is a whole number and applies additional rules. In particular, a compliance rating of one or two stars caps the official overall rating at that level. Since 16 September 2026 the Elderberry Index applies the same cap: when a home’s Compliance rating is one or two stars, its Index cannot exceed that number. The Index otherwise keeps the weighted decimal result rather than rounding to a whole star. In the August 2026 extract no home carries a Compliance rating of one or two, so the cap changes no current score; it binds when such a rating is published.
Beside the Index, each home page shows the government’s own record from the same extract where one exists: the most recent compliance decision (its type, the date it was applied and the date it closed) and the government’s stated reason for the Compliance rating. These are facts from the published file, not inputs to the Index. Each page also shows the five published Star Ratings, naming any star the government has not published, and the home’s Index across every stored extract since May 2023 with the change since the previous extract. History and record never alter a home’s rank.
Where two homes share the same Index, the home with the higher Google rating lists first, then the home with more Google reviews, then alphabetical order. The Google rating (read from the home’s Google Maps listing, with its review count and the date it was read) is shown beside the Index as a second number; it is never an input to the Index.
A home can therefore have an Index above 3 while its official overall rating is 2. The Index does not replace or override that official rating. Read the compliance result and current regulatory information alongside it.
The four factors
We use the government’s completed sub-ratings as inputs. The collection, assessment and conversion of the underlying observations into stars take place within the government program. Elderberry does not repeat those assessments or assign additional weights to the individual survey questions or clinical measures.
Residents’ experience — 33%
This input reflects residents’ responses to the annual Residents’ Experience Survey. An independent survey team randomly selects residents, with the program seeking participation from at least 20% of residents in each home. A family member or supporter may provide feedback when a resident cannot do so.
Twelve multiple-choice questions contribute to the government rating, covering subjects including respect, safety, care, food and daily activities. The survey also includes open-ended feedback that does not contribute to the score. Elderberry uses the resulting star rating, rather than individual answers or online reviews.
Source: My Aged Care: Residents’ Experience Survey.
Compliance — 30%
This input records the government’s assessment of a home’s compliance position. Regulatory decisions, the time since a decision and the period of provider ownership can affect the result. It is not an Elderberry inspection of the home.
The government changed this category from 1 November 2025 to incorporate graded assessments against the strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards as homes transition to the revised system. The August 2026 extract used on this site post-dates that change, so its compliance sub-ratings reflect the strengthened Standards where a home has been assessed under them.
Source: Department of Health: changes to Star Ratings.
Staffing — 22%
The staffing sub-rating compares reported care time with targets that reflect the care needs of residents in each home. It considers registered nursing time and total care time, including care delivered by enrolled nurses and personal care workers or assistants in nursing.
Providers report care minutes through their Quarterly Financial Report. We use the published staffing star rating, rather than recalculating targets or verifying individual rosters. The government revised its staffing rules for care delivered from 1 October 2025, and the revised ratings appear in extracts from May 2026 onward, including the August 2026 extract used here.
Sources: My Aged Care: nursing and personal care; Department of Health: staffing rating changes.
Quality measures — 15%
This sub-rating uses provider-reported information about five areas: pressure injuries, restrictive practices, unplanned weight loss, falls and major injury, and medication management. The government compares performance across homes and adjusts some measures for differences in residents’ clinical and care needs. Restrictive practices and medication management are not risk-adjusted.
Elderberry imports the resulting quality-measures star rating. We do not inspect residents’ clinical records, recalculate those adjustments or combine the wider Quality Indicator Program’s measures into a separate clinical score.
Source: My Aged Care: quality measures.
Missing ratings
A home needs all four sub-ratings to receive an Index. If any one is missing from our data, its Index remains unavailable. We do not substitute zero, estimate a missing value, use the provider average or redistribute the missing factor’s weight.
Such homes remain in the directory as “Not yet rated”. This means that Elderberry cannot calculate its Index from the stored inputs. It does not establish why an input is absent, whether the home has since received a rating, or whether an original data match was incomplete.
An official overall rating can exist even when Elderberry cannot calculate an Index. Two homes in the reviewed database had an overall rating but lacked a required sub-rating. Missing data is therefore different from a low score.
Provider averages and list ordering
For a brand or operator, we add the Index scores of its scored homes and divide by the number of scored homes. Each home contributes equally, regardless of its number of beds. Homes without an Index are excluded from that average but remain part of the operator’s home count. Geographic and national Index averages use the same approach.
The national mean at this refresh was 3.81 across 2,366 scored homes. An operator average based on two homes and one based on fifty homes have different coverage. Neither means that every home run by that operator provides the same experience.
Directory tables that rank by Index put higher scores first, with unscored homes after scored homes. Other displays use other measures: the homepage’s large-provider table is ordered by bed count and reports average official overall stars; map searches use location and display official overall stars. Read the column label before comparing values.
The Index formula contains only the four government sub-ratings. Price, room availability, photographs, Google reviews, referral arrangements and answers in the eligibility form are not inputs to that formula. A hundredth of a point is an arithmetic difference; it is not evidence of a statistically significant difference in care.
Checks and limitations
The Index is not typed in: the database computes it from the four stored sub-ratings with the formula above, so it cannot disagree with them. At this refresh we recomputed it independently for every home: all 2,366 scored homes matched, and all 224 homes with an incomplete set of inputs had no Index. Every home matched on its exact name was also read back against the government file itself, and every operator average was recomputed from its homes; no differences were found.
These checks establish consistency within Elderberry’s stored data. They do not independently verify care delivered, the accuracy of each provider’s reporting or every original match between the service list and ratings extract. The import records, for every home and every extract, which extract row it matched and how (exact name, checked variant, or none), so each displayed rating can be traced to its government source row.
The government program has its own checks. Its provider manual describes validation of submitted care minutes, comparisons with funding and expenditure, and opportunities to correct reporting errors. It also provides for review of quality-indicator submissions and a provider preview before publication. These steps introduce a delay between care being delivered and ratings being published.
Source: Star Ratings Provider Manual, sections on reporting requirements and provider preview. Current guidance describes the government process; it does not establish which checks were applied to each historical record on Elderberry.
The Index summarises published categories. It does not measure whether a particular home suits an individual’s care needs, budget, language or location preferences, and it does not predict their future experience. The relevant home’s current official ratings and the underlying category results provide context that a single average cannot retain.
Source documents
The links throughout this page distinguish the historical datasets cited by Elderberry from current government explanations. The main reference documents are:
- GEN Aged Care Service List, 30 June 2025 — home, operator and resident-place records used in the directory; published 7 October 2025.
- Star Ratings quarterly extract, August 2026 — the ratings source on every page; published 7 August 2026. SHA-256 of the file we loaded:
a41e71a50451de799ef0ac4ee11dc38b0c11c074522603eb3db87550a3392e80. - ABS 2021 Urban Centres and Localities boundaries (ASGS Edition 3) — the GDA2020 boundary file used to group homes into cities and towns.
- Star Ratings Provider Manual — government calculation, reporting and validation rules.
- How Star Ratings are calculated — explanation of weights, categories and the official overall rating.