Audit overview

We do audits to assess if providers can conform with the strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards (strengthened Quality Standards) and deliver safe and high-quality care. Audits help us make decisions about registration, renewal of registration and variation of registration. We announce audits, so providers know when they’re happening.

When we do an audit

We do an audit when a provider applies:

for registration in categories 4, 5 or 6 (registration audit)
to renew their registration in categories 4, 5 or 6 (renewal of registration audit)
to add a new category (4, 5 or 6) service to their registration (variation of registration audit).

What the audit assesses

Audits assess if a provider can conform with the strengthened Quality Standards. Audits focus on:

your governance arrangements
your systems and processes for delivering care
the experience and outcomes for older people in your care
if you have safe, high-quality practices across your services.

Audits look forward. They look at the effectiveness of providers systems and processes to continuously improve and sustain conformance with the strengthened Quality Standards.

The audit process

The audit process has 3 stages:

Audit initiation: We contact you to start the audit process. We ask for key documents and evidence of how you conform with the outcomes of the strengthened Quality Standards and will explain what you can expect during the audit.
Audit delivery: We will collect and assess evidence of how you conform with the strengthened Quality Standards. This is broken into two sections, one focused on the provider and the other which looks at care delivery. We meet with your governing body and senior management and gather information about your governance, systems and processes. We then test whether these have been embedded and consistently applied in the delivery of aged care services. We'll visit each service if you deliver services in Category 6 and some of your services if you deliver services in categories 4 and 5 in a service environment.
Audit reporting: We prepare a preliminary report that summarises our findings. You can give your feedback on the preliminary report. We then prepare a final report. The final assessment report is provided at the end of each audit.

At the completion of the audit program, you will receive a final audit report, which summarises conformance ratings for all the audits conducted during the program.

To learn more about audit reporting and audit ratings visit audit process and graded assessment and audit ratings.

We communicate with you at every stage of the audit. We provide information to support you and we offer opportunities to respond to our findings.

We charge audit fees for applications to register, renew or vary one or more of categories 4, 5 or 6. This includes providers registered in category 1, 2 or 3 that want to register in categories 4, 5 or 6. Audit fees are based on a cost recovery model and are proportionate to the services you deliver.

To find out the fees that apply, see registration fees.
To learn more about the audit process, see audit process.