Residential Aged Care Cost Collection 2024–25 Final Report

The cost collection includes data from almost 200 residential aged care homes between July 2024 and September 2025. It combined real-time measurement of direct care time using Bluetooth-enabled devices with additional workforce, resident and activity data.

The final report will inform our pricing advice to the Australian Government as well as the future development of aged care costing standards and business rules.  

Cost insights 

Average daily costs increased with care complexity and were mostly consistent with direct care time patterns where:

• the average daily cost for permanent residents was $430
• the average daily cost for respite residents ranged from $381 to $498 
• direct care labour accounted for 50 to 60% of total expenditure and remained the primary cost driver 
• higher average costs were observed in smaller and remote aged care homes and in government-operated services. 

Deep dive analysis 

A deep dive analysis found that:

• indirect care is a measurable part of aged care workload, documentation and care management represented the bulk of indirect care time and resident characteristics, and the digital maturity of the facility also impact indirect workload
• allied health services are limited, supply-driven and dominated by physiotherapy
• respite care incurs higher and more variable daily costs, largely due to their short-stay nature and high turnover
• overhead allocation significantly affects stream-level cost attribution and further investigation is needed. 

Recommendations

The report includes recommendations across 10 key focus areas, including improving representativeness, strengthening care-time measurement and analysis, establishing a costing roadmap and strengthening sector capability.