Aged Care Checker is an independent Australian website that reviews and compares residential aged care homes. It exists because choosing a home is one of the hardest decisions a family makes, and the information you need is scattered, technical and often written for providers rather than people.
Australia has more than 2,500 residential aged care homes, run by around 700 providers. Each one publishes a Star Rating, reports care minutes, files quality indicators every quarter and sets its own accommodation prices. The government publishes almost all of it, but across a dozen portals, spreadsheets and PDFs that few families ever find.
Aged Care Checker brings that information into one place, puts homes side by side, explains what each number actually means, and adds the thing official data can never capture: the experience of residents and the people who visit them.
We are starting with residential care because that is where the stakes, and the costs, are highest. Home care and Support at Home comparisons will follow.
Four rules we hold ourselves to on every page.
We are not owned by or affiliated with any aged care provider. Any commercial relationship that could affect what you see on this site will be disclosed on this page.
Every statistic we publish is tied to a named official source and a date. Where two official sources disagree, we show both. We do not estimate or derive figures that have not been published.
Terms like RAD, DAP, AN-ACC and means-tested care fee are explained every time they appear. If a sentence would not make sense to someone reading it at a kitchen table at 11pm, we rewrite it.
When we get something wrong we fix it and note the correction on the page. If you spot an error, tell us and we will check it against the primary source.
James Keane is the founder and editor of Aged Care Checker.
James kept seeing the same problem: families trying to find a good aged care home for someone they love, and struggling to get straight answers. The information exists, but it is spread across government portals, spreadsheets and provider brochures, written in language that assumes you already understand the system. People were making one of the biggest decisions of their lives on a gut feeling and a guided tour.
He decided to build the resource he thought should already exist: one place where every home in Australia can be looked up, compared side by side on the things that actually matter, and explained in plain language. That became Aged Care Checker.
James researches and writes the site's data reports, including the Aged Care Statistics Australia page, working directly from Department of Health, Disability and Ageing releases, the Productivity Commission's Report on Government Services, AIHW data and Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission reports.
He is not affiliated with any aged care provider, industry body or government agency. You can connect with James on LinkedIn view his profile on Crunchbase, or reach him as a source for journalists on Connectively.
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