ACQSC Audit Preparation Guide
How to prepare for an ACQSC assessment contact.
Assessment contacts can be announced or unannounced. The best preparation is continuous compliance — not last-minute scrambling. This guide covers what assessors look for, how to organise your evidence, and practical strategies for audit readiness.
Understanding Assessment Contacts
What is an assessment contact?
An assessment contact is a regulatory evaluation conducted by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission (ACQSC) to determine whether a provider is meeting its obligations under the Aged Care Act 2024 and the Aged Care Quality Standards.
Assessment contacts involve onsite inspections, document review, interviews with staff, residents, and families, and observation of care practices. Assessors evaluate compliance across all seven Quality Standards.
Announced assessment contacts
Scheduled in advance, giving providers time to prepare documents and coordinate staff availability. However, the scope and depth of the assessment are not disclosed beforehand.
Unannounced assessment contacts
Conducted without prior notice. Assessors arrive and expect immediate access to documentation, staff, and residents. These reveal whether compliance is embedded in daily operations or only present during planned audits.
Review audits
Targeted assessments triggered by a specific concern — a complaint, a SIRS notification pattern, or a previous non-compliance finding. These focus on specific standards or areas of concern.
What Assessors Evaluate
The 7 Aged Care Quality Standards.
Every assessment contact evaluates your compliance against the seven Strengthened Quality Standards. Understanding what assessors look for in each standard is the foundation of audit preparation.
Standard 1: The Individual
Assesses how providers and workers treat older people — with dignity, respect for choices, identity, culture, and autonomy.
Key evidence types
Individualised care plans reflecting consumer preferences and cultural needs
Records of informed consent and advance care directives
Feedback and satisfaction survey results
Evidence of cultural safety practices and linguistic support
Standard 2: The Organisation
Covers governing body responsibility, culture of safety and quality, workforce governance, risk management, complaints handling, and continuous improvement.
Key evidence types
Governing body meeting minutes and decision records
Risk register with assessment and mitigation evidence
Workforce planning, screening, training, and care minutes data
Complaints register, feedback analysis, and improvement actions
Continuous improvement register with progress evidence
Standard 3: The Care and Services
Requires safe, effective, person-centred care and services including assessments, care planning, personal care, and support services.
Key evidence types
Comprehensive assessment and care plan documentation
Evidence of regular care plan reviews and consumer involvement
SIRS incident register with investigation and remediation outcomes
Restrictive practices register and behaviour support plans
Standard 4: The Environment
Requires safe, comfortable, welcoming environments that meet consumers' needs, including physical facilities, equipment, and emergency preparedness.
Key evidence types
Building and equipment maintenance schedules with completion records
Emergency and disaster preparedness plans and drill records
Work health and safety inspection reports
Environmental hazard identification and remediation records
Standard 5: Clinical Care
Covers clinical governance, medication management, infection prevention, wound care, palliative care, and response to clinical deterioration.
Key evidence types
Clinical governance framework and clinical audit results
Medication management records, reconciliation, and incident reports
Infection prevention and control procedures and outbreak logs
Wound management, vital signs monitoring, and palliative care records
Standard 6: Food and Nutrition
Covers food service quality, dietary requirements, nutritional assessment, meal preferences, and meeting cultural food needs.
Key evidence types
Menu planning records and dietary requirement documentation
Nutritional assessment and monitoring records
Consumer satisfaction surveys on food and meals
Evidence of meeting cultural and religious food requirements
Standard 7: The Residential Community
Applies to residential care only. Covers community life, social connections, meaningful activities, and how the residential setting supports quality of life.
Key evidence types
Activity programs showing variety and consumer participation
Evidence of community engagement and social connection support
Consumer feedback on community life and activities
Records showing how consumer preferences shape community activities
Evidence Preparation
What to have ready.
When assessors arrive — announced or unannounced — you need to be able to produce this evidence promptly. The speed and completeness of your response tells assessors whether compliance is embedded in your operations or assembled on demand.
Self-assessment records against each of the seven Quality Standards
Improvement plans with progress evidence and completion dates
Incident registers (SIRS) with investigation outcomes and remediation evidence
Complaints register with resolution evidence, timeframes, and improvement actions
Workforce compliance records including screening, police checks, training, and care minutes data
Clinical care documentation including assessments, care plans, medication records, and vital signs
Governance records including board minutes, risk register, compliance reports, and policies
Responsible persons register with suitability assessments and screening clearances
Common Pitfalls
What causes providers to fail.
Understanding what goes wrong for other providers helps you avoid the same mistakes. These are the most common issues identified during assessment contacts.
Relying on paper-based or spreadsheet systems
When assessors request evidence, you need to produce it quickly. Spreadsheets scattered across shared drives, paper registers in filing cabinets, and email chains do not support rapid evidence retrieval. Assessors notice when it takes hours to find a document.
Not conducting regular self-assessments
Self-assessment should be ongoing, not annual. Providers who only assess compliance before a known audit often have gaps they are unaware of. Regular self-assessment identifies issues before assessors do.
No continuous improvement register
Assessors look for evidence that you identify opportunities for improvement and act on them. Without a formal register linking identified gaps to actions, timelines, and outcomes, you cannot demonstrate a culture of continuous improvement.
SIRS investigation outcomes not linked to quality improvement
An incident that is investigated but produces no systemic change suggests a compliance-only mindset. Assessors expect investigation findings to feed into your improvement register and inform changes to policies, training, or procedures.
Workforce compliance gaps
Expired police checks, missed mandatory training, insufficient care minutes, or incomplete screening records are among the most common findings. These are binary — you either have current records or you do not.
No cross-referencing between modules
If an incident in SIRS does not link to the resident in clinical care, the staff member in workforce, and the relevant quality standard in governance, you are missing the connections assessors look for. Siloed systems create siloed evidence.
How Statura Care Helps
Be audit-ready at all times.
Statura Care makes audit preparation a non-event. Because compliance is built into daily workflows, the evidence assessors need is always current, always accessible, and always connected across modules.
Auto-generated evidence packs
Generate compliance evidence for each Quality Standard at the click of a button. Evidence is pulled from across all modules — incidents, complaints, workforce, clinical, and governance — into a single structured report.
Cross-module intelligence
Data flows between modules automatically. An incident in SIRS links to the resident, the staff member, the complaint, and the relevant Quality Standard. Nothing is siloed.
Continuous self-assessment
Track your self-assessment progress against each standard continuously. Identify gaps as they emerge, not months later during audit preparation.
Always audit-ready
Because compliance is woven into daily operations, you are always prepared for an unannounced assessment contact. No scrambling, no last-minute document hunts.
Related resources
Guides, checklists, and modules to support your audit preparation.
Be audit-ready at all times
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