Aged care reform 2025/26: What providers need to do now

Reform has landed. Now the real work begins. The new Aged Care Act and Support at Home program came into force, reshaping how aged care operates, funds, and proves quality. It is the most significant structural change in a generation — and providers are now operating inside a compliance environment that rewards organisations that are ready, and exposes those that are not.

The question for providers in 2025 and 2026 is not whether to act, but what to prioritise first.

What the Reform Requires Operationally

The Support at Home program introduces a new assessment and budget framework that places individual choice at the centre of care planning. For providers, this means care plans need to be more dynamic, service delivery records need to be more granular, and reporting needs to be structured around individual outcomes rather than just service hours.

At the governance level, the new Act strengthens the obligations of approved providers on quality systems, incident management, and continuous improvement. These are not tick-box requirements — they require organisations to demonstrate that their systems actually work as intended.

Where to Start

Providers who are still running care management on legacy systems or disconnected tools should treat 2025 as the year to address that. The compliance expectations under the new Act are not compatible with manual documentation at scale.

Sognos works with aged care providers to implement SognosCare — a purpose-built care management platform on Microsoft Dynamics 365 — that is designed for exactly this operating environment. If you want to understand what implementation looks like for your organisation, reach out to our team.