Getting in

How do you find and choose a nursing home?

Updated 24 August 2026

Finding a nursing home in Australia runs in a fixed order: apply for an aged care needs assessment through My Aged Care, use the approval to shortlist homes near you that have a place free, visit the ones you would genuinely accept, then apply to all of them. An aged care home cannot take you as a permanent resident until you have been assessed and approved for residential care, so the assessment starts the process and everything else follows it. Three things then decide which home you end up in: whether a home has availability where you need it, what its Star Rating shows about staffing, compliance and residents' experience, and what the room and the ongoing fees will cost. The Elderberry directory lists 2,590 aged care homes run by 708 providers as at August 2026. Narrowing that list to the few homes that will actually take you is where the work sits.

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What has to happen before a home can take you?

An aged care needs assessment and an approval for residential care have to happen before any aged care home can accept you as a permanent resident. Eligibility for a government-funded needs assessment starts at 65 years of age, and at 50 years of age for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and for people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, under the criteria in About residential aged care on health.gov.au, last updated 4 February 2026. Nursing home eligibility for government-funded aged care is based on three inputs: your age, your needs and your situation. The assessor checks eligibility and grants the approval that lets you access government-funded residential aged care.

The assessment is arranged through My Aged Care. After an application is submitted, an assessment organisation calls the applicant within 2 to 6 weeks to arrange the face-to-face assessment, as published on My Aged Care's Should I apply? page at 23 August 2026. The same sequence applies whether you are arranging care for yourself or arranging a place for a parent, because the approval belongs to the person entering care.

How do you find aged care homes near you?

My Aged Care's Find a provider tool is the official way to browse aged care homes near you, build a shortlist and compare homes side by side. All six comparison points below sit inside Find a provider, so one search covers them.

• Location. Find a provider browses local providers, so location decides which aged care homes reach the shortlist at all, and every comparison point below applies only to those homes.
• Accommodation and cost. Aged care homes publish their maximum room prices, and Find a provider carries the accommodation on offer alongside what it costs, so you can rule a home in or out on price before making contact.
• Cultural and diverse needs. Find a provider carries how each aged care home meets cultural and diverse needs, so two homes can be compared on that dimension the same way they are compared on cost or on quality.
• Availability. Not all aged care homes have a place free for someone wanting to move in. Occupancy averaged 88.0% across all residential care places in 2023-24, climbing from 86.1% in 2022-23, so a home you like may have nothing free in the month you are ready.
• Quality. Star Ratings run from 1 to 5 stars overall, with four sub-category ratings beneath the overall figure, and Find a provider shows them next to each other for the homes on your list.
• Finance and operations. A home's published expenses, income and budget show how the provider spends, earns and manages money, which describes how the organisation behind the home is run.

How much choice a location gives you varies sharply by state and territory. The Elderberry directory counts 2,590 aged care homes and 224,493 places nationally as at August 2026, spread like this.

State or territory	Aged care homes	Places
New South Wales	817	73,173
Victoria	733	60,386
Queensland	457	43,820
Western Australia	249	20,189
South Australia	233	18,456
Tasmania	65	5,158
Australian Capital Territory	27	2,752
Northern Territory	9	559

What do Star Ratings actually measure?

Star Ratings measure four separate things about an aged care home and combine them into one Overall Star Rating from 1 to 5 stars. The four sub-categories carry different weightings, so the overall figure is a weighted blend of unequal parts. Those weightings are published in How Star Ratings works on health.gov.au, last updated 18 May 2026.

• Residents' Experience, 33% of the Overall Star Rating. This rating comes from the Residents' Experience Survey, a face-to-face survey run each year that reaches at least 20% of the residents in every home. It is the only sub-category built from what residents themselves report, and it carries the heaviest weighting of the four.
• Compliance, 30%. The Compliance rating reflects regulatory decisions and, from 1 November 2025, assessment graded against the strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards. Moving every aged care home onto the redesigned Compliance rating will take up to 3 years, so two homes on your shortlist may hold compliance ratings produced under different methods.
• Staffing, 22%. The Staffing rating compares the care minutes a home delivers against that home's own targets, and those targets vary with the care needs of its residents. From 1 October 2025, a home must meet both its mandatory registered nurse care minutes target and its total care minutes target to reach a Staffing rating of 3 stars or better. A shortlisted home rated 3 stars or above for staffing has therefore met both targets.
• Quality Measures, 15%. The Quality Measures rating covers five clinical indicators: pressure injuries, restrictive practices, unplanned weight loss, falls and major injury, and medication management. The five are not treated identically: three of the indicators are risk adjusted, while restrictive practice and medication management are not.

Star Ratings also refresh on different clocks. Staffing and Quality Measures are updated quarterly, while the Compliance rating is still mid-transition, so the number you read is a snapshot assembled from sub-categories measured at different times.

A missing Overall Star Rating carries information of its own. For a new home, a home with new owners or a recently reopened home, it takes up to 12 months before enough data exists to calculate the Overall Star Rating. A missing rating can also mean the home reported its data late, or chose not to provide the data or take part in the residents' survey, without being granted an exemption. At the other end of the scale, a 1-star rating generally means significant improvement is needed.

Across the Elderberry directory, 2,386 of the 2,590 aged care homes carry an Overall Star Rating, and 73.5% of those rated homes sit at 4 stars or above as at August 2026. A high overall rating is therefore common inside the directory, and the sub-categories are where two homes on the same shortlist separate. The Elderberry directory's average Staffing rating is 3.02 stars as at August 2026, against 3.52 for Residents' Experience.

What should you check when you visit a shortlisted home?

Four questions are worth putting to every aged care home you visit, covering its staff, its visiting practitioners, its complaints system and its performance against the Aged Care Quality Standards. Visiting a shortlisted aged care home is a step in the official process, and My Aged Care publishes what to look at. Bring your Notice of Decision letter and support plan to each visit, because those documents help explain the care and services you need.

• What staff work here. Ask what types of staff are available at the home, including allied health professionals. The answer a home gives on a tour can be checked against its published Staffing rating, which is built from delivered care minutes.
• What practitioners visit. Ask what types of visiting staff the home has, such as dentists, doctors, optometrists and geriatricians. My Aged Care lists that as a question separate from what staff are available at the home, so ask both on the same visit.
• How complaints are handled. The Aged Care Act requires each provider to run an effective complaints system that is easy to understand and use, so ask to see it. No provider, worker or responsible person may treat you differently, or punish you, because you raised a concern.
• How the home performs against the Quality Standards. Every government-funded home must meet the Aged Care Quality Standards, regulated by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission. A home that falls short can draw a formal regulatory decision, issued by the Commission or by the System Governor.

Residents also hold a Statement of Rights under the Aged Care Act 2024, and the Older Persons Advocacy Network gives older people in government-funded aged care free, independent and confidential support.

Residential respite care gives you a longer look at a home than a tour does: up to 63 days of subsidised residential respite are available in a financial year, as published by My Aged Care at 23 August 2026. Your assessor can approve further blocks of 21 days at a time. No means tested care fee and no accommodation payment can be charged during a respite stay, and a respite resident receives the same care and support services that permanent residents get. Being approved for respite does not guarantee a bed, so a respite stay still depends on a home having one free.

Where two or more aged care homes on your list would do, apply to every one of them. You do not need to accept an offer if you do not want to.

How much do you have to pay in an aged care home?

What you pay in an aged care home splits into fees for care and everyday living, plus a separate price for the room. Which fees apply depends on when you entered care, because the way aged care is funded in Australia changed on 1 November 2025. Under the 1 November 2025 arrangements, government pays the entire cost of clinical care in aged care homes. Under the earlier 1 July 2014 arrangements, which still cover people who entered before that date and Home Care Package holders protected by the "no worse off" principle, government funding for clinical care is adjusted by your means assessment.

The 1 November 2025 arrangements carry four fees. The maximum rates below come from the Schedule of fees and charges for residential care that applies from 1 July 2026, and My Aged Care publishes the same current rates on its aged care home costs and fees page.

• Basic daily fee, up to $66.80 a day. Every permanent resident of an aged care home pays the basic daily fee. At the maximum rate it is $66.80 a day, or $24,382 a year, and the government reindexes the fee every 20 March and 20 September.
• Hotelling contribution, up to $22.15 a day. The hotelling contribution goes towards daily living services and runs up to the limit of the hotelling supplement, $22.15 a day. The supplement itself is means tested, and it is indexed in March and September. Where income and assets sit below the thresholds, government keeps paying the full hotelling supplement.
• Non-clinical care contribution, up to $107.32 a day. The non-clinical care contribution leaves out clinical care costs and carries a daily cap of $107.32. It stops permanently once a resident reaches $137,917.01 in total contributions, or after four years of cumulative contributions, whichever comes first.
• Higher everyday living fee, optional. A provider cannot agree or charge this fee before you enter care, and no home can make it a condition of entry, or use it to secure a room. It took the place of the old extra service and additional service fee arrangements from 1 November 2025, and there is a 28-day cooling off period once you do agree to one.

Residents on the 1 July 2014 arrangements pay a means tested care fee, which sits between $0 and $372.03 a day. The means tested care fee is capped annually: $35,910.43 a year, and $86,185.23 over a lifetime, at the rates in the same schedule. Indexation moves both caps in March and September.

What does an aged care home room cost, and how do you pay for it?

Everyone entering an aged care home has to agree the price of their room in writing with the provider before entry. A home's published maximum price sets the ceiling for that agreement: you and the provider can negotiate a lower price, and no home can charge more than its published price for that room. A room price above $789,686 requires prior approval from the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority, and below that amount providers set their own prices. That $789,686 threshold is the figure in the Schedule of fees and charges for residential care that applies from 1 July 2026, and it increases with indexation in July each year.

Accommodation does not have to be paid in full upfront. My Aged Care sets out three payment options, and you cannot be asked to choose between them before you move into the home.

• A refundable lump sum. You pay the agreed room price as a refundable accommodation deposit, which the provider holds and refunds when you leave care, less any retention deducted.
• Daily payments. A daily payment functions like rent: none of it comes back to you when you leave care. A daily accommodation payment is derived from the agreed room price using the maximum permissible interest rate, with the result divided by 365. For residents entering care from 1 July 2026 to 30 September 2026 the MPIR is 8.43%, and it is updated quarterly. The rate that applies to you is fixed on the day you and the provider agree the room price.
• A combination of the two. You pay part of the room price as a refundable lump sum and the remainder as daily payments, with the daily portion calculated the same way.

Two rules make the lump sum option more expensive than it first looks. Retention catches everyone whose first entry to residential aged care falls on or after 1 November 2025, where any part of the room price is paid as a refundable deposit: the provider deducts 2% per annum of the balance, and after 5 years no more retention amounts are deducted. A refundable lump sum is also counted as an asset of the resident in the means assessment, even where a family member provides the money, so a lump sum can raise your other fees. That same sum stays exempt from the age pension means test.

How much money can you have in the bank for aged care?

There is no limit on how much money you can hold and still enter an aged care home. Your income and assets set what you pay, not whether a home can take you. A means assessment showing less capacity to pay produces a larger government contribution. For a single person whose income is below $35,521.20 and whose assets are below $64,500.00, the Australian Government pays the full accommodation costs. Those two figures are the income free area and the asset free area in the Schedule of fees and charges for residential care that applies from 1 July 2026, and both amounts change with indexation.

Four rules decide how a bank balance is counted in the residential aged care means assessment.

• Financial assets are counted at a deemed rate. Financial assets are assessed at a deemed rate of income, so what an asset actually earns is left out. Earnings above the deemed amount are ignored entirely, and a term deposit paying above the deemed rate does not lift your fees.
• Only a capped slice of the family home counts. If you keep your family home, the means assessment counts its net market value up to a cap of $214,884.00. That cap is the figure published as at 20 March 2026, and it applies separately to each member of a couple. The home is not counted as an asset at all if a protected person lives in it.
• Couples are assessed on half of everything. For a couple, the assessment includes half of the combined income and half of the combined assets, no matter who earned the income or whose name sits on an asset.
• Declining the assessment means paying the maximum. Completing a means assessment is not mandatory. Anyone who does not provide the information pays at the highest rates and receives no government assistance towards the cost of living in the home.

Timing matters as much as the amounts. A fee advice letter lasts 120 days, counted from the assessment date, as published by My Aged Care at 23 August 2026, and anyone who has not entered care by then needs a fresh assessment. Your means status is fixed by the income and assets you hold on the day you enter, and it does not change while you stay in the same home, however your financial circumstances change later. Moving to a different aged care home requires a new means assessment.

The former home raises a separate pension question. Keeping the home and not renting it out preserves an Age Pension assets test exemption for 2 years after moving into aged care, per Moneysmart, last updated 18 August 2026. Selling it puts the sale value into the Age Pension assets test.

What happens if you can't afford a nursing home in Australia?

Financial hardship assistance exists for people who, through circumstances outside their control, cannot meet their aged care costs. Where you qualify, the Australian Government pays part or all of your fees, contributions and accommodation costs. You may apply for hardship assistance with the basic daily fee, the means tested care fee, and accommodation costs, depending on your situation.

Eligibility carries a hard asset gate. Your assets must total no more than $46,835.10 once unrealisable assets are excluded, the figure My Aged Care published at 23 August 2026, which is the annual basic age pension with supplements multiplied by 1.5. Financial hardship assistance never covers extra and additional service fees, or the higher everyday living fee, so an optional services agreement stays your responsibility.

Free advice comes before the application. Services Australia's Financial Information Service costs nothing and is open to everyone, and you can talk through your options with an Aged Care Specialist Officer at a Services Australia service centre.

Common questions

What is the fastest way to get into a nursing home?

An urgent entry is the fastest route. In urgent circumstances, an older person can enter residential aged care before any assessment or approval has happened. The provider must then help complete and submit the emergency application within 5 days, as published in About residential aged care on health.gov.au at 23 August 2026. Where there has been no assessment, emergency access to residential respite in an aged care home may also be possible.

Getting into an aged care home through the standard path takes considerably longer. For ongoing residential care, the median elapsed time from My Aged Care application to commencement of care was 167 days and the average was 396 days between 1 November 2025 and 31 March 2026, per the Wait Times Report published 12 May 2026. The national median elapsed time across all non-specialist services was 294 days. That measure covers the entire access pathway from application through to service commencement, and it counts periods that are not system-managed waiting time, such as a person's readiness to begin care and a provider's availability. The report notes the distribution is highly skewed, so median values represent typical experience better than averages, and that its retrospective data may not reflect current system pressures. Availability sits with individual homes, so the length of your shortlist affects how soon a place is likely to come up.

What three things will push you into a nursing home?

Two conditions define who an aged care home is for: the person cannot live independently at home any more, and everyday tasks or health care now need ongoing help. Age is the third gate, because residential aged care is not built for people aged under 65. What an aged care home supplies against those conditions is accommodation, personal care, general health care, social activities, everyday living services such as catering, and access to nursing 24 hours a day. Home care usually comes first: 54.4% of people who entered permanent residential care in 2023-24 did so after leaving home care, up from 54.3% in 2022-23, per the financial report on the Australian aged care sector for 2023-24.

How long does the average person live once they go into a nursing home?

Residential aged care had an average length of stay of 2.8 years in 2023-24, down from 3.0 years the year before, per the financial report on the Australian aged care sector. That figure measures length of stay in a home, not how long a resident lives. Residential respite is measured on a separate scale: the average residential respite stay was 30.6 days in 2023-24.

What is the biggest complaint in nursing homes?

Medication administration and management is the single most complained-about issue in residential aged care, ahead of personal and oral hygiene and staff numbers. It drew 840 issues raised at the top of the Top 10 residential care complaint issues in 2023-24, in the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission's complaints year in review. Complaint volumes are climbing: complaints about residential care rose 6.9% in 2023-24 against the prior year, reaching 5,427 for the twelve months. Ask each shortlisted home how it administers and reviews medication, and check its Quality Measures rating, where medication management is one of the five indicators.

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Tell us the area and care needs; we match you with rated aged care homes and real availability.

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