How we rank homes
We publish the government's ratings unchanged, then order homes by three things in sequence. Here is exactly how, and why.
Why the star alone doesn't separate homes
Every home gets an Overall Star Rating out of five. In the current data, most of them land on the same one.
No home in Australia holds an overall rating below 3 stars, and 69% of rated homes hold exactly 4.
So the star on its own doesn't get you very far. Take the 1,659 homes that all hold 4 stars: among them, residents' survey scores run from 62% to 100%, and staffing ranges from 227 minutes a day short of target to 347 minutes over. Same star, very different homes.
What we do instead
Homes are ordered by three measures, each breaking ties in the one above.
- 1
Overall Star Rating
The government's figure, unchanged. In practice this is 3, 4 or 5.
- 2
Residents' survey score
Our one derived number: the average of the twelve questions residents are asked, counting the share who answered "always" or "most of the time". It splits the star buckets into 39 distinct levels.
- 3
Staffing gap
Care minutes actually delivered per resident per day, minus the home's own target. 143 distinct values, which makes it the most granular figure we have.
Where all three tie, homes are ordered by name. Unrated homes sort last, and are never presented as low-scoring — they simply have no published rating yet.
What we don't do
- No home can pay to change its position. There is no paid placement on this site, at any price.
- We don't adjust the government's numbers. Every rating, minute and percentage is reproduced as published, with the extract date shown.
- We don't invent a star rating. Our survey score is labelled as ours and shown as a percentage, never as stars.
- We don't rank homes on things we can't measure. Kindness, atmosphere and whether a place suits one particular person are not in any dataset. Use the rankings to decide where to visit, not which to choose.
Why we're allowed to publish this
The Australian Government publishes the Star Ratings quarterly data extract under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. That licence expressly permits anyone to copy, redistribute, adapt and build on the material, including commercially, on three conditions: credit the source, indicate that changes were made, and don't imply government endorsement. We do all three, on every page.
Reorganising, ranking and summarising public data is exactly the use the licence contemplates. But to be unambiguous: this site is independent. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Australian Government, the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, or My Aged Care. The ratings are theirs. The ordering is ours.
If you think something is wrong
Tell us and we'll check it against the source. Our corrections policy sets out what we can change, what we can't, and how quickly.