SAH Quality Indicators: What Providers Need to Do Now

Quality indicator reporting is coming to Support at Home. While the exact commencement date has not been confirmed, the Department of Health and Aged Care has signalled that SAH quality indicator obligations will follow a phased introduction, with reporting proposed to commence no earlier than the second half of 2026. A pilot of 7 proposed indicators ran from October to December 2024, and the legislative machinery to mandate reporting is already in place.

Most home care providers are not ready. Unlike residential aged care, where mandatory quality indicator reporting has been in place since 2019 and expanded progressively, Support at Home providers have never had to collect, analyse, or submit quality indicator data. The indicators themselves are fundamentally different from residential QI — built around consumer experience surveys and service delivery metrics rather than clinical data extraction. Providers who wait for the final Rules to be gazetted before building their data infrastructure will face a scramble that is entirely avoidable.

The window to prepare is now.

The SAH Quality Indicator Program is a proposed quality measurement framework for providers delivering services under the Support at Home program. Its purpose is to give the Department, the ACQSC, consumers, and providers themselves a consistent, evidence-based picture of service quality in home-based aged care.

The program is separate from the National Aged Care Mandatory Quality Indicator Program (NAQIMQP) that applies to residential aged care. Residential QI has operated since 2019 and expanded progressively to 14 indicators from 1 April 2025. SAH QI is being developed as a distinct framework because the care context is fundamentally different — services are delivered in the person's home, care is episodic rather than continuous, and the provider does not control the environment.

The legislative basis for SAH QI exists today. Section 110 of the Aged Care Act 2024 empowers the Minister to require registered providers to collect and report quality indicator data. The Aged Care Rules 2025 currently prescribe quality indicators for residential services only, but the Rules can be amended by legislative instrument to extend quality indicator obligations to Support at Home providers. No new Act of Parliament is required — only an amendment to the Rules.

The Department piloted 7 quality indicators across 3 domains during the October–December 2024 trial. These indicators were tested with a sample of home care providers and consumers to assess feasibility, data collection methods, and indicator validity. The 3 domains and their indicators are:

Domain 1: Consumer Experience

This domain captures the consumer's direct experience of their care through survey-based instruments. Three indicators were piloted: quality of care experience (how consumers rate the quality of the care and services they receive), overall rating (a global satisfaction measure), and willingness to recommend (whether consumers would recommend the provider to others). These indicators rely on structured consumer surveys administered at regular intervals — not one-off feedback forms.

Domain 2: Quality of Life

This domain uses a single indicator: quality of life measure, assessed through a validated instrument. The specific instrument used in the pilot was designed to capture the consumer's self-reported quality of life across dimensions relevant to aged care, such as independence, social connection, dignity, and control over daily life. This is a consumer-reported outcome measure, not a provider assessment.

Domain 3: Service Delivery

This domain measures operational quality through 3 indicators: participant involvement in care planning (whether consumers are meaningfully involved in developing and reviewing their care plan), missed visits (visits that were scheduled but not delivered, including cancellations by the provider), and care plan review timeliness (whether care plans are reviewed within required timeframes). These indicators are drawn from service delivery data that providers should already be capturing in their care management systems.

Providers familiar with residential quality indicator reporting should not assume SAH QI will be a similar exercise. The differences are structural, not just cosmetic.

Consumer surveys vs clinical data extraction. Residential QI is predominantly clinical — pressure injuries, unplanned weight loss, falls, restrictive practices, medication management. Data is extracted from clinical records by staff. SAH QI Domains 1 and 2 are consumer-reported, requiring systematic survey administration, response collection, and data aggregation. This is a fundamentally different data collection capability that many home care providers do not currently have.

Missed visits is entirely new. There is no residential equivalent of the missed visits indicator. Residential care is delivered continuously — the provider is always on-site. In home care, each visit is a discrete event that can be missed, shortened, or cancelled. Tracking missed visits requires scheduled-versus-actual visit reconciliation, which means your rostering and care delivery systems must record both what was planned and what was delivered.

Care plan review timeliness requires date tracking. While residential providers also review care plans, the SAH indicator specifically measures whether reviews happen within defined timeframes. This requires systems that record when each care plan was last reviewed and flag when the next review is due.

Denominators differ. Residential QI denominators are relatively stable — they are based on bed occupancy. SAH denominators will be based on active service agreements, which fluctuate as clients enter and exit the program, change classification levels, or pause services. Accurate denominator calculation requires clean, up-to-date client records.

No clinical indicators — yet. The pilot focused on consumer experience, quality of life, and service delivery. Clinical indicators such as falls, medication incidents, or hospital presentations were not included in the initial 7. However, the legislative framework allows additional indicators to be added over time, and providers should not assume the scope will remain limited.

The short answer is: not yet confirmed, but the trajectory is clear.

The Department has indicated a phased approach. Based on publicly available information, the proposed timeline is for SAH quality indicator reporting to commence after 1 July 2026 — approximately 12 months after the SAH program went live on 1 November 2025. This would give providers a full year of operating under SAH before reporting obligations are added.

The Government has also signalled that it is likely to start with a subset of 1 to 3 indicators rather than all 7 at once, expanding the set over time as data collection matures and the sector builds capability. This mirrors the residential QI experience, which began with 3 indicators in 2019 and progressively expanded to 14.

What we do not yet know includes: the exact commencement date (the Rules amendment has not been made), which indicators will be mandated first, the reporting frequency (quarterly is likely, consistent with residential QI), whether there will be a shadow reporting period before data becomes public, and the specific data submission format and technical requirements.

What we do know is that the legislative power exists today under s 110 of the Aged Care Act 2024, the pilot has been completed, and the Department is actively developing the final indicator specifications. Providers should plan on the assumption that reporting will commence in the second half of 2026.

Waiting for the final Rules before taking action is the single biggest risk for home care providers. The indicators have been piloted, the legislative power exists, and the policy direction is unambiguous. Providers who build their data infrastructure now will be ready when the obligation commences. Those who wait will be retrofitting systems under time pressure.

Here are the practical steps providers should take now:

1. Establish a consumer feedback system. Domains 1 and 2 require structured, repeatable consumer surveys — not ad-hoc satisfaction questionnaires. You need a system that administers validated survey instruments at defined intervals, records individual responses linked to the consumer's record, aggregates results into reportable indicator values, and maintains an audit trail. If your current approach to consumer feedback is informal or paper-based, this is the most significant capability gap to address.

2. Implement missed visit tracking. Your care delivery system must record every scheduled visit and its outcome — delivered as planned, delivered late, shortened, cancelled by provider, cancelled by consumer, or unable to access. The missed visits indicator requires reconciliation between the schedule and what actually happened. If your rostering system does not capture visit outcomes at the point of care, you have a data gap. Statura Care's Care Delivery module tracks scheduled-versus-actual service delivery, giving providers the visit-level data that SAH QI will require.

3. Automate care plan review monitoring. The care plan review timeliness indicator requires you to know when every active care plan was last reviewed and when the next review is due. Manual tracking via spreadsheets or diary entries is unreliable at scale. Statura Care's Clinical Care module manages care plan lifecycles with automated review scheduling and overdue alerts — the same data that will feed the timeliness indicator.

4. Clean your client records. Accurate denominator calculation depends on clean client data — active service agreements, classification levels, entry and exit dates, and service status. Review your client records now and establish processes to keep them current.

5. Build baseline data. Even before reporting is mandatory, start collecting the data that SAH QI will require. Run consumer surveys, track missed visits, and monitor care plan review compliance. This gives you baseline data to benchmark against when national reporting begins, and identifies data quality issues before they matter for compliance.

6. Map your systems to the 3 domains. For each of the 7 proposed indicators, identify where the source data lives in your current systems. If the data does not exist, that is a gap you need to close. If it exists but is fragmented across multiple systems, you need an integration plan. Statura Care's Quality Indicators module is being built to aggregate SAH QI data alongside residential indicators — a single platform for all quality indicator reporting obligations.

Not yet. The aged care star ratings system currently applies only to residential aged care services. There is no confirmed timeline for extending star ratings to Support at Home providers.

However, quality indicator data is the foundation on which star ratings are built. In residential aged care, the Quality Measures domain of the star rating is derived directly from clinical quality indicator data submitted through the NAQIMQP. If the Government eventually introduces a quality comparison framework for home care — whether star ratings or an alternative model — SAH quality indicator data will almost certainly be the primary input.

Providers should view SAH QI not just as a compliance obligation but as preparation for a future where home care quality is publicly measured and compared. The providers who establish strong QI performance early will be best positioned when that comparison framework arrives.

Statura Care is building SAH quality indicator reporting capability now — well before the obligation commences. When the Aged Care Rules are amended to mandate SAH QI reporting, providers using Statura Care will already have the data infrastructure in place.

The Support at Home module tracks every scheduled visit against actual delivery, providing the missed visit data that Domain 3 requires. The Clinical Care module manages care plan lifecycles with review scheduling and overdue monitoring — directly feeding the care plan review timeliness indicator. The Quality Indicators module is being extended to support SAH-specific indicators alongside the existing residential QI framework, giving providers a single reporting platform across both care settings.

For consumer experience and quality of life measurement (Domains 1 and 2), Statura Care's consumer feedback tools will support structured survey administration linked to individual client records — the systematic, auditable approach that SAH QI demands.

The advantage of preparing now is straightforward. Providers who have been collecting SAH QI data before it becomes mandatory will have clean baseline data, established collection processes, and no last-minute system changes when the Rules take effect. Statura Care's aged care compliance software is purpose-built for this — 35 modules covering every obligation under the Aged Care Act 2024, with SAH QI readiness built in from day one.