AN-ACC explained: what aged care providers need from their software

On 1 October 2022, the Australian National Aged Care Classification replaced the Aged Care Funding Instrument as the primary funding mechanism for residential aged care. ACFI was a provider-assessed, documentation-heavy system that rewarded coding effort as much as care need. AN-ACC is different: funding is determined by an independent assessor using a validated classification tool, and providers are paid a fixed daily rate that corresponds to one of thirteen AN-ACC classes plus an adjustment for palliative care and NDIS recipients.

The shift was designed to reduce the perverse incentives built into ACFI — where maximising revenue meant maximising the complexity of care documentation rather than the quality of care. Under AN-ACC, a provider's funding is determined by an independent AN-ACC assessor who visits the facility, reviews the resident, and assigns a class. The provider has no ability to influence the classification directly. What they can influence is whether the resident's actual needs are visible to the assessor, which depends on the quality of clinical documentation and care records maintained by the facility.

This changes what aged care software needs to do. Under ACFI, the software's primary job was to maximise claim values — ensuring diagnoses were coded, care hours were documented, and complex health care scores were supported by the right evidence. Under AN-ACC, the software's job is to ensure accurate clinical information is readily available when the assessor arrives, that the facility can quickly produce a comprehensive picture of each resident's needs, and that any changes in resident condition between classification periods are flagged for reassessment.

Funding review triggers matter enormously under AN-ACC. If a resident's condition changes significantly — a major deterioration, a new diagnosis, a significant improvement — the provider can request a reassessment. Missing that trigger means the resident remains funded at the wrong class for potentially months. Good software flags clinical changes that might indicate a class boundary crossing and prompts staff to consider whether a reassessment is warranted. Generic aged care software built for ACFI doesn't have this logic; it was built to help providers document upward, not to monitor resident condition for funding accuracy.

The Department of Health and Aged Care publishes AN-ACC class rates quarterly and adjusts the base rate with the Commonwealth Home Support Programme indexation. Any software doing funding calculations needs to stay current with these rates — something that requires either a manual update process or a maintained data feed. Providers evaluating software for AN-ACC compliance should ask specifically how rate changes are handled, how long the lag is between a rate announcement and a system update, and whether the system flags when a rate has not been updated.