Your staff are spending half their shift on admin. Here’s what the data says.

The Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority (IHACPA) recent Residential Aged Care Cost Collection 2024–25 Final Report yielded insights that aged care leaders need to know. Costs are rising and the funding model needs to be reviewed, indirect care time is causing a strain, and remote facilities face different challenges. 

While this might not come as a surprise, the report does offer evidence of the unbalanced reality many providers experience everyday. 

Direct and indirect care minutes tell a different story to government price

HealthConsult pulled real-time direct care data from Bluetooth-enabled wearables in 188 residential aged care homes between July 2024 and September 2025, over 355,830 days, including 12,537 residents. This data was reconciled with both Aged Care Financial Report (ACFR) and Quarterly Financial Report (QFR) data to form the report. 

What’s so groundbreaking about this report is that, for the first time ever, they’ve objectively measured direct car minutes at scale. As the largest aged care cost collection ever performed by IHACPA, it gives a much clearer picture of what’s happening in facilities than what’s previously been captured via self-reporting or roster estimates. 

“It validates what providers have been saying for years,” shares Tyler Fisher, Head of Data & Insights at Mirus Australia. “Care is more expensive than the funding suggests. It is uncomfortable because the gap between measured cost and government price has rarely been so visible”. 

The key findings leaders need to pay attention to

1. Costs are rising and the current funding model may no longer reflect reality

The funding model was built in 2018 and the cost structure has shifted materially since. The average daily cost for a permanent resident is now $430, ranging from $354 for AN-ACC Class 2 to $489 for Class 13. That’s notably higher than the RACCS 2023 figures across all classes.

So if you’re a provider running higher-acuity residents, you may be underfunded relative to actual costs. If you’re an advocate or policy-facing leader, this is the evidence basis for pushing IHACPA to update weights.

2. Labour is the number one cost drive, but indirect care isn’t being factored in

Your staffing costs are being benchmarked against a metric that doesn’t measure a significant chunk of what your staff actually do. Direct care labour accounts for 50-60% of costs, but there’s an invisible and substantial workload – documentation, clinical communication, coordination – that’s not being shown in care-minute targets.

This has real consequences: providers that need to do more documentation – driven by dementia, palliative care, compliance, or fragmented IT systems – are absorbing costs that aren’t visible in funding calculations. This is an operational efficiency issue and a funding evidence issue that needs to be captured in explicit role- and shift-based ways for future costing cycles.

3. Remote and small providers operate in a different economic reality

The report highlights the stark difference in geographic and size costs across the country. Remote facilities average costs that are twice that of metropolitan locations ($768 compared to $419-$460). 

Organisations operating in regional or remote settings, or managing small facilities, carry a structural cost pressure that the funding model doesn’t fully account for. This also means current efficiency benchmarks might not be the best way to compare these types of providers.

Start small by having a conversation with your team

There’s one thing you can do from the report that sits directly in your control as a leader: the amount of indirect care time happening in your facility. It won’t require a funding model review and has a direct line to both workforce retention and cost management. You also won’t need your team to use Bluetooth wearables to get a fairly accurate picture of what’s happening. 

The report shows that RNs are spending approximately 45% of their time on indirect activities, with documentation dominating at 54% of indirect time on day shifts and 70% overnight. That’s not care delivery – it’s admin.

Ask your care manager two questions this week:

1. What does an RN’s shift actually look like, hour by hour?
2. What’s slowing them down? Is it a system problem or a process problem?

If your documentation systems are fragmented, that’s fixable. If your rostering doesn’t factor in documentation load on night shifts, that might be a staffing model problem. Once you know what’s really going on, you’ll be in a better position to take action.