An aged care resident doesn’t see a star rating. They see whether someone comes when they call, and what arrives on the plate.
Mirus Australia’s second Aged Care Efficiency (ACE) Index tries to score both sides of that experience. It rates the sector 6.3 out of 10 for 2025–26, but it’s the detail underneath that number that matters more.
Four pillars, one lopsided result
The index scores four pillars out of 10:
- Clinical quality: 7.9
- Consumer satisfaction: 6.3
- Resourcing: 6.2
- Financial sustainability: 5.0
Consumer satisfaction led in Mirus’s 2024 edition. Clinical quality leads now. Mirus says the 2024 ratings were expert judgement, so the swap is a guide, not a trend line.
Care is paying for everything else
Provision of care earned $22,879 per resident a year before tax. Hotel services and accommodation lost $4,595 per resident. That unit covers cleaning, laundry, catering, maintenance, utilities and depreciation.
Mirus scored the accommodation side at zero, a call it made itself. Without that floor, the financial pillar falls to 3.6 and the overall index to 6.0.
This isn’t a sector profit figure. It covers two business units and leaves out overheads, financing costs and tax. StewartBrown’s survey of 1,173 homes found an operating result of negative $9.16 per bed day for the nine months to March 2026. Some 62% of homes were making a loss, up from 49% a year earlier.
The governance risk is concentration.
Robert Covino, Mirus Australia CEO, wrote in the report’s forward, “If the care margin is carrying the building, what happens when the funding that produces it stops rising faster than your costs?”
Any change to AN-ACC pricing or the care minutes supplement then lands on the only part of the business making money.
Compliant, but outcomes sit mid-table
The average Compliance star is 4.86 out of five. More than eight in ten homes hold five stars and none sits below three. The average Quality Indicators star is 3.06, and nearly one home in four holds a one or a two.
Mirus calls that 1.8-star gap its main clinical finding. The Compliance rating was rebased on 1 November 2025, so Mirus treats its level as provisional. Quality indicator data is largely self-reported.
The average hides a tail
Homes delivered 107.6% of their RN care minute target and 102.3% of their total target on average. The average staffing star is 3.085.
In Mirus’s own cohort data, 66.3% of homes met both targets from April to June 2026. Of those still short, 73% were within five minutes of both.
“Most homes are already meeting their care minute targets, so the next gain isn’t more staff,” Tyler Fisher, Mirus’s Head of Data and Insights, said. “It’s knowing what each minute of care costs to deliver, home by home, and closing the gap between the most and least efficient.”
The stakes have changed. Since April 2026, part of care funding is paid on a sliding scale against the previous quarter’s reported minutes. A shortfall can cost a home twice: first in its star rating, then in revenue two quarters later.
How the sector sees itself
Between 105 and 113 organisations scored the sector in a September webinar poll. Financial sustainability was the only pillar rated lower than in 2024. Respondents rated their own resourcing 6.9 but the sector’s 5.9. Mirus says the poll measures sentiment, not performance.
Chief executive Robert Covino called compliance a real achievement for the sector.
“Compliance has become the floor almost every provider stands on,” he said. The differences between providers now sit above that floor, he said, in how efficiently each turns funding into care, quality and a sustainable business.
Questions for the board
At your next board meeting, float the following questions:
- What does each half of your profit and loss score when split into care and hotel services and accommodation?
- How much of your result comes from care subsidy, and what remains if that margin narrows?
- Are you modelling care minutes as a revenue input or only a compliance duty?
- Is your gap between Compliance and Quality Indicators wider than the sector’s 1.8 stars?
Read the report with care
Fisher said every Edition 2 score is calculated from the published methodology. Mirus has “shown our workings for every pillar”, he said, so providers can reproduce the result and test their own position against it.
The financial figures come from Mirus’s own dataset, which draws on data from a cohort of provider CFOs. Mirus offers benchmarking reports to providers. The consumer pillar uses two of three planned components and Mirus says it should be read as directional.
Scores reflect the quarter ended 30 June 2026. Mirus says it will reconcile its financial figures against the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’s snapshot when that publishes.
