Should You Become an Aged Care Provider

A Q&A on Australia's 2026–2027 Opportunity with NWBA Board Member Wojtek Swietek

Q1: Why is now considered a good time to look at aged care as a business opportunity?

Australia's aged care system is going through its biggest overhaul since the original Aged Care Act was introduced almost three decades ago. The new Aged Care Act 2024 came into force on 1 November 2025, replacing a provider-centred model with a rights-based one and tightening oversight across the board. Whenever a sector undergoes this scale of regulatory reset, established operators struggle to adapt while well-prepared new entrants can move quickly into the gaps that open up. The window between now and the next major milestone in 2027 is when that positioning advantage is built.

Q2: How big is the actual gap between demand and registered providers right now?

Bigger than most outsiders assume, and this is really the core argument for getting into the sector. There are roughly 4.2 million Australians aged 65 and over, and well over a million of them are currently accessing some form of government-funded aged care, whether through home support, a home care package or residential care. Against that base, there are fewer than 900 registered home care providers nationally. It's worth comparing that to the NDIS, a similarly structured individualised, government-funded scheme: the NDIS supports several hundred thousand more participants than aged care's home care client base, yet it has somewhere in the order of 17,000 to 20,000 registered providers, plus well over 150,000 unregistered operators sitting alongside them. Put simply, aged care is running a comparable funding model on a fraction of the provider base. If the sector ever approached anything close to the provider density the NDIS has, the market could comfortably support in the order of 15,000 to 20,000 registered providers rather than under a thousand. That gap, more than any single policy change, is what makes this a genuine first-mover window rather than a crowded market story.

Q3: What exactly changed with the Support at Home program, and why does it matter for new providers?

From 1 November 2025, the old Home Care Packages and Short-Term Restorative Care programs were folded into a single Support at Home program. It comes with a clearer service list, more flexible funding, and dedicated pathways for assistive technology, home modifications and restorative or end-of-life care. For a new entrant, this matters because it replaces a patchwork of older programs with one consistent framework to build a service offering around, making it considerably easier to design, price and scale a home care business than it would have been under the previous system.

Q4: What is the single biggest growth opportunity in the sector right now?

Home and community-based care, by a wide margin. Government policy is deliberately steering older Australians toward ageing in place rather than moving into residential facilities, and Support at Home funding directly supports personal care, nursing, allied health, domestic assistance, home modifications, assistive technology and social support. Combine an ageing population with a strong consumer preference for staying at home, and you have a demand curve that residential aged care simply doesn't have in the same way.

Q5: Why would home care be a better entry point than opening a residential facility?

Yes, Residential aged care demands heavy upfront capital, carries ongoing occupancy risk, and sits under intense compliance scrutiny. Home care services can be started with a fraction of that capital outlay, scaled gradually, and adjusted as funding rules evolve. For a business owner weighing where to deploy capital and management attention over the next two to three years, home and community care offers a materially better risk-to-reward profile.

Q6: What's coming in 2027, and why should we be planning for it today rather than waiting?

In July 2027, the Commonwealth Home Support Programme will be absorbed into Support at Home, merging what is currently a fragmented network of local councils, charities and small community operators into one national in-home care system. Many of these existing CHSP providers have already signalled that the rising compliance burden makes continued operation difficult, which means mergers, exits and service gaps are coming. Providers that already have scalable systems, a trained workforce and a clean compliance record in place before 2027 will be the natural acquirers and the natural choice for clients and referral partners left looking for a new provider.

Q7: Are there specific niches that are more attractive than general aged care services?

Yes, and this is where margins tend to be stronger and competition lighter. Dementia care, services for culturally and linguistically diverse communities, Indigenous aged care, veterans' care, palliative care, home modifications, assistive technology supply, allied health, and care coordination all sit outside the traditional "one-stop-shop" model the new framework is moving away from. A specialist provider that does one or two of these things exceptionally well is often better positioned than a generalist trying to cover everything.

Q8: What about regional or rural markets — are they worth considering?

They're consistently flagged as a priority by government, with dedicated grants and funding initiatives aimed at providers willing to operate where services are thin. The trade-off is straightforward: less population density, but far less competition and typically stronger, stickier referral relationships once you're established. For a business owner with existing regional operations or relationships, this can be one of the lowest-friction ways into the sector.

Q9: How big a factor is technology and digital systems in being competitive?

Bigger than most newcomers expect. Reporting, incident management, governance and workforce screening obligations have all increased substantially under the new Act, and the sector is still relatively under-digitised compared with healthcare and disability services. Providers using digital care management platforms, remote monitoring, medication management tools and automated incident reporting are managing compliance at a fraction of the cost and effort of those still running on paper or spreadsheets. Building this in from day one, rather than retrofitting it later, is one of the clearest competitive advantages available to a new entrant.

Q10: Workforce shortages are widely reported in aged care - is that a barrier or an opportunity?

It's genuinely both, and that's exactly why it's worth paying attention to. Direct care delivery will always be affected by workforce shortages, but the shortage itself has created consistent, resilient demand for businesses that solve the problem rather than experience it: nursing and care worker recruitment, workforce training, and workforce compliance services. These businesses can do well even in a tightening labour market, because demand for care workers is only expected to keep growing over the coming decade.

Q11: Why would a joint venture or consortium structure make sense rather than going it alone?

The reforms reward exactly the combination of skills a single business rarely has on its own: clinical and care expertise, regulatory and compliance capability, workforce supply, and technology infrastructure. A consortium lets each partner contribute their strongest capability rather than building all four from scratch, spreads the capital and compliance burden across multiple parties, and creates a structure that's well placed to acquire or absorb smaller CHSP providers as they exit ahead of the 2027 transition. Given how much consolidation is expected over the next eighteen months, a well-structured joint venture is often the fastest credible path to meaningful scale.

This briefing is intended as a starting point for discussion, not as financial or legal advice. Any decision to enter the aged care sector should be supported by detailed due diligence on funding models, registration requirements and local market conditions.