Most of the attention on 1 October has gone to personal care becoming free under Support at Home. But another change lands the same day, and it shapes the quality of residential aged care rather than its price to residents. The Australian National Aged Care Classification price is increasing. It’s technical, but it matters. Here’s the plain-language guide.
What AN-ACC Actually Is
AN-ACC is the funding model that determines how much the government pays a residential aged care home to care for each resident. When someone enters permanent residential care, they’re assessed and assigned a classification reflecting how much care they need. The more complex the need, the higher the classification, and the more funding the home receives.
The “AN-ACC price” is the base dollar figure that classification is multiplied against. When it rises, homes receive more funding per resident, without residents paying more for care.
What’s Changing on 1 October
From 1 October 2026, the AN-ACC price increases. The hotelling supplement rate, which covers the everyday living side of residential care, meals, laundry, cleaning, utilities, remains unchanged at the same time.
That split is deliberate. The increase is directed at the care side, and the care side is where the workforce costs sit. Funding increases like this typically follow wage decisions, and the sector has been working through a multi-year process of lifting aged care wages, including the final instalment for nurses earlier this year.
What It Means for Residents
Here’s the important clarification: this is a change to what the government pays homes, not a change to what residents pay. Your basic daily fee, means-tested contributions and accommodation costs are set separately and aren’t altered by the AN-ACC price itself.
The benefit to residents is indirect but real. More funding for care is what allows homes to meet their mandatory care minutes and the requirement for a registered nurse on site 24 hours a day, and ultimately to pay and retain staff. Given that staffing is the single biggest driver of care quality, funding that supports staffing is not a trivial change.
The Honest Caveat
It’s worth being realistic about what a funding increase does and doesn’t fix. More funding helps homes meet their obligations, but the sector’s core problem is finding and keeping workers in a tight labour market where it competes directly with the NDIS for the same people. Money helps, but it doesn’t instantly produce trained staff.
So this should be read as a necessary condition for better care rather than a guarantee of it. The test is whether homes translate the funding into more staff hours and better retention, which is exactly what the care minutes reporting and Star Ratings are designed to show.
What to Do With This
For families, the practical use of knowing about AN-ACC is in the questions you ask. When comparing homes, staffing is the thing to probe: how they meet their care minutes and registered nurse requirements, what their turnover looks like, and how they cover absences. The Star Ratings staffing sub-category now requires a home to meet both its total care minutes and its registered nurse targets to score three stars or more, which makes it a genuinely useful comparison point.
If you’re already in a home, this change gives you a reasonable basis to ask how additional care funding is being used. Details on the funding model and ratings are on the Department of Health’s aged care pages.
The Bottom Line
The AN-ACC price rise on 1 October increases what the government pays residential aged care homes for care, while the hotelling supplement stays the same. It doesn’t change what residents pay, but it supports the staffing that drives care quality, which is where the sector’s real constraint sits. Use it as a prompt to ask homes how they staff their care minutes, and watch the Star Ratings staffing measure. This is general information, not aged care, medical or financial advice.
Epik Wire covers aged care in plain language for older Australians and their families. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed.
