Healthcare Staffing Agency Australia

StaffBank is a specialist healthcare recruitment agency supporting Australia’s healthcare sector.

We place doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals across hospitals, aged care facilities, and healthcare networks, with full AHPRA compliance and recruitment support aligned with the Aged Care Act 2024 — including 24/7 RN coverage and 215-minute care standards.

Healthcare Staffing Agency Australia

Why the Aged Care Act 2024 Changed Everything for Clinical Workforce Planning

On 1 November 2025, the Aged Care Act 2024 came into full effect in Australia — replacing the previous regulatory framework with what has been described as the biggest reform to aged care since John Howard’s 1997 changes. The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety made 148 recommendations in its 2021 final report. The Australian government implemented them. All of them. And for healthcare operators across the country, the compliance landscape has shifted permanently

The single most operationally significant change is mandatory 24-hour registered nurse presence in all residential aged care facilities — with no remaining exemptions from 1 July 2025 onwards. From 1 October 2024, aged care providers must also deliver each resident 215 minutes of direct care per day, with at least 44 of those minutes spent with a registered nurse. These are not aspirational targets. They are legally enforceable requirements, auditable through the new Care Minutes Performance Statement that providers must now
prepare and submit with external audit from the 2025 to 2026 financial year.

The Australian National Audit Office confirmed that in September 2023 — when the 24/7 RN requirement was first introduced — residential aged care facilities reporting full compliance ranged against a target of 100 percent. As of 1 November 2025, the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission has expanded regulatory powers including the ability to enter and search residential aged care facilities without a warrant. The consequences of non-compliance have moved from reputational to criminal.prepare and submit with external audit from the 2025 to 2026 financial year.

For-profit aged care services are performing significantly worse on care minutes compliance than not-for-profit homes. In metropolitan major cities, only 18 percent of for-profit homes met both their care minutes and RN targets in Q2 2024 to 2025 compared to 45 percent of not-for-profit homes according to the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’s care minutes dashboard. The gap is a workforce planning failure — not a willingness failure

What This Means for Your Clinical Workforce in 2026

The staffing implications of the Aged Care Act 2024 are specific and non-negotiable. If your residential aged care facility does not have a registered nurse on duty 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you are in breach of federal law as of 1 July 2025.

If the aggregate RN minutes delivered to your residents falls below the mandated 44 minutes per resident per day, the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing will record it in a publicly accessible dashboard — and the ACQSC may take regulatory action.

The workforce required to meet these standards does not exist in sufficient volume in Australia. The country projects a nursing shortfall of 123,000 by 2030. The aged care sector alone needs 17,000 additional workers annually just to maintain current care standards, let alone meet the elevated standards now legally mandated.

International nurse recruitment is not an optional strategy for aged care operators in Australia in 2026. It is the only viable path to sustained compliance.

Why AHPRA Compliance Is More Complex Under the New Act

Under the Aged Care Act 2024, every registered nurse providing care in a Commonwealth-funded residential aged care facility must hold current AHPRA registration. This has always been the case. What has changed is the accountability framework around it. The Care Minutes Performance Statement — now subject to external audit — requires providers to demonstrate that the RN hours being claimed are delivered by practitioners who are AHPRA-registered and appropriately qualified for aged care practice.

Internationally recruited nurses face an additional layer of consideration. ANMAC skills assessment, AHPRA registration, English language verification, and orientation to the specifically Australian aged care quality standards framework must all be completed before a nurse can be counted toward the mandatory RN minutes requirement. Agencies that recruit nurses internationally and then discover compliance gaps at the placement stage are not just wasting the client’s time — they are putting the client’s registration and regulatory standing at risk.

StaffBank manages the complete AHPRA pathway for every internationally recruited nurse placed into Australian healthcare. We begin ANMAC preparation before formal presentation. We confirm AHPRA registration status before any client agreement is reached. We brief every internationally placed nurse specifically on the Aged Care Quality Standards 2025 framework and the 215-minute care standard requirements before their first shift.

Clinical Roles We Staff in Australia Under the New Framework

Registered nurses for residential aged care -- 24/7 RN compliance and 44-minute per resident per day clinical contact requirements met
Clinical care managers and facility managers -- leadership roles with specific accountability under the Aged Care Act 2024 Code of Conduct
Dementia care specialists -- with the new rights-based framework, specialist dementia competency is increasingly required rather than preferred
Palliative care nurses -- end-of-life care standard is one of the seven Quality Standards under the new Act
Hospital nurses and specialists -- doctors, nurses, and allied health across NSW, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory outside aged care settings
Physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech pathologists -- allied health whose AHPRA registration pathways we manage alongside nursing placements

StaffBank has delivered international healthcare recruitment at NHS England national programme level — supporting the NHS England Global Fellows Programme for Emergency Medicine, the NHS Global Learners Programme for International Nurse Recruitment, and the NHS England International Diagnostic Radiography Recruitment Programme.

Alongside these national programmes, StaffBank supported the Devon Alliance for International Recruitment across six NHS Trusts in Devon, where the programme celebrated its 1,000th international nurse arrival in August 2023 and continues to grow.

Frequently Asked Questions

What exactly does the 215-minute care standard mean for staffing requirements in 2026?

From 1 October 2024, every residential aged care facility must provide each permanent resident with a minimum of 215 minutes of direct care per day. Of those 215 minutes, at least 44 must be delivered by a registered nurse. The remaining 171 minutes may be delivered by enrolled nurses or personal care workers.

These are per-resident daily minimums — so a 60-bed facility needs to demonstrate aggregate delivery of 12,900 minutes of direct care per day, with 2,640 of those minutes delivered by registered nurses. The numbers required to meet these targets in large residential facilities make international nurse recruitment essential for most operators. StaffBank calculates the RN hours required against your facility size before agreeing any sourcing mandate, so you know exactly what headcount gap we are solving.

Can the ACQSC actually penalise a facility that misses care minutes targets in 2026?

Yes — and the regulatory powers have been significantly strengthened under the Aged Care Act 2024. From 1 November 2025, the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission can issue compliance notices, enter and search residential facilities without a warrant or consent, issue banning orders against providers and responsible persons who breach their obligations, and in the most serious cases pursue civil penalty provisions through the courts. Non-compliance is publicly visible — the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing publishes care minutes performance data for individual homes quarterly. This means the regulatory and reputational consequences of workforce gaps are now directly linked. The only durable solution is having the right number of appropriately qualified registered nurses rostered consistently.

How long does it take for an internationally recruited nurse to be ready to count toward mandatory RN minutes in Australia?

For most internationally trained nurses requiring ANMAC skills assessment and AHPRA registration, the realistic timeline is 6 to 12 months from identification to start date. StaffBank compresses this by beginning ANMAC preparation at the sourcing stage — not after an offer is made — and managing documentation proactively.

For nurses from comparable healthcare systems such as the UK, Ireland, or New Zealand who may qualify for a streamlined AHPRA assessment pathway, the timeline can be shorter. We provide accurate start date projections for every candidate before they are presented to a client, so workforce planning is based on real information rather than optimistic estimates.

Does the Aged Care Act 2024 affect hospital and community health staffing as well as aged care?

The mandatory care minutes and 24/7 RN requirements are specific to residential aged care settings.

However, the broader impact of the Aged Care Act 2024 on the nursing workforce is significant for all healthcare operators. As residential aged care providers compete more aggressively for registered nurses to meet compliance requirements, the pressure on hospital nursing workforces intensifies. StaffBank recruits for both aged care and hospital settings, and we advise clients on how the aged care compliance environment is affecting the broader nursing labour market in their region.