Aged Care

What is aged care?

On any given day approximately one in every 100 Australians receive care in a residential care service or through a community care package.

Medicare Australia administers more than $6 billion worth of Aged Care payments annually to approved providers across a range of residential, community, and flexible Aged Care programs.

Medicare Australia 's Aged Care payment responsibilities include the processing and payment of:

• residential Aged Care subsidies and associated supplements for provision of high-level and low-level residential care
• residential respite care subsidies and associated supplements for provision of short-term high-level and low-level residential care, to provide carers with relief from their caring role
• community Aged Care package subsidies for provision of support to people with low-level complex health needs and their carers, to enable them to remain at home
• flexible Aged Care subsidies including:
  • extended Aged Care at home subsidies for provision of support to people with high-level complex health needs and their carers, to enable them to remain at home
  • extended Aged Care at home dementia subsidies for provision of dementia specific support to people with high-level complex health needs and their carers, to enable them to remain at home
  • transition care subsidies for provision of short-term rehabilitation care to recipients after care in hospital, pending access to longer term care.

To access forms for Aged Care, please see Aged Care forms.

Medicare Australia has introduced online claiming to allow approved providers and their services to submit or view data electronically. To find out how, please see Aged Care Online Claiming.

Useful links and information

Department of Health and Ageing

• Department of Health and Ageing: Ageing and Aged Care information
  Information and resources for aged care services including material for residential and community care providers and the general public.
• Aged Care e-Connect: Interim Online Claiming Capabilities
  Information regarding the Department of Health and Ageing's involvement in the project and their other eConnect projects.
• Payment Essentials – Department of Health and Ageing 
  Payment Essentials is a monthly newsletter designed to keep financial officers within Residential Aged Care Services (RACS) informed of changes to all payment related forms and processes for residential aged care.
• ACAT Chat – Department of Health and Ageing
  ACAT Chat is a monthly newsletter to keep Aged Care Assessment Teams (ACATs) informed of current policy and program directions and current issues.

Aged Care peak bodies

• Aged Care Association of Australia
  The Aged Care Association Australia is a professional, national industry association for providers of quality residential and community aged care services
• Aged & Community Services Australia
  Aged and Community Services Australia is the national peak body in Australia representing over 1,200 church and charitable and community based organisations providing accommodation and care services to over 450,000 older people, people with a disability and their carers

Viability funding—1999 ARIA scores for locations

The ARIA provides an indicator of the accessibility of services by locality. This document contains links to the index as at 1 July 1999.

The ARIA is used to assess the remoteness of the location of a care recipient's home. ARIA is a precise measure of the accessibility of all geographical locations in Australia. It scores and classifies each location into one of five groups:

• highly accessible
• accessible
• moderately accessible
• remote, and
• very remote.

The rate of viability supplement for community care will be based on the ARIA score of the care recipient’s location.

The files below contain alphabetical listings for localities in that state/territory only. You can download the listings in PDF format:

• ACT ARIA scores [PDF, 39Kb]
• NSW ARIA scores [PDF, 233Kb]
• NT ARIA scores [PDF, 55Kb]
• QLD ARIA scores [PDF, 562Kb]
• SA ARIA scores [PDF, 111Kb]
• TAS ARIA scores [PDF, 67Kb]
• VIC ARIA scores [PDF, 169Kb]
• WA ARIA scores [PDF, 299Kb]

Feedback/enquiries

Aged Care feedback/enquiries allow you to register your feedback or make an enquiry about Aged Care programs, payments or online claiming.

Some documents on this page may require the free Adobe PDF reader.

Last updated: 30 June, 2009