The 2-hour minimum: what the regulator says providers cannot do
A common clause in home care service agreements: every visit carries a minimum service time — often two hours — no matter how long the task actually takes. A 45-minute shower service books two hours of budget. Providers sometimes explain it as unavoidable: award rules, rostering, staff minimums. In July 2026 the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission addressed this directly — and drew a hard line.
What changed, and what the Commission said
The Fair Work Commission has changed the three awards covering aged care work (the Aged Care Award, the SCHADS Award and the Nurses Award), with several pay rises since 2022 and the final agreed increase for nurses landing on 1 August 2026. Rising staffing costs are real, and providers may genuinely need to adjust prices. But the Commission’s Quality Bulletin #7-2026 names three practices as not acceptable under any aged care award:
- Blanket minimum service times — such as 2-hour shifts — written into service agreements. The Commission’s position: providers should only provide and charge for services for the time needed. A 2-hour service is sometimes appropriate — but it must be based on the person’s assessed needs, never a standard minimum applied to everyone.
- After-hours rate creep. When a service runs across standard and after-hours periods, the standard-hours portion must be charged at the standard rate — not the whole service at the higher rate.
- Blaming the award. Claiming that award changes force longer minimum service times is, in the Commission’s own words, a misleading term or condition. Award changes can affect staffing costs and pricing — they do not change how much care a person needs.
And the Commission attached a consequence: “If we find providers doing any of these, we will take action to protect older people.”
Why padded time costs you twice
Under Support at Home, an unneeded minute is not neutral — it bills twice. First it drains the quarterly budget, using up funded care the person was assessed as needing. Then it lands on the contribution: you pay your percentage of every dollar the service costs, needed or not. As an illustration, at a $100 hourly price and a 20% contribution rate, a 2-hour minimum on a task that takes 45 minutes spends about $125 of budget on unused time and adds about $25 to your own share — every single visit. Across a year of visits, a blanket minimum quietly becomes one of the largest charges nobody agreed to need.
The referee is your assessed need
The anchor in every conversation about service length is the care plan. The Commission’s standard is that service time must be based on assessed needs, goals and preferences — and the Aged Care Rules separately require that older people can understand and participate in service agreement decisions, including prices. If the care plan provides for 45 minutes of personal care, a contract clause booking two hours is a mismatch you are entitled to question — and from August 2026 the Commission is running a targeted review of Support at Home providers’ pricing transparency and service agreement practices, selecting providers partly from complaints received. Questions asked in writing right now carry unusual weight.
The written question
As always: email, not phone. One paragraph does it: “My care plan provides for [X minutes] of [service]. Please confirm the basis for the 2-hour minimum service time being applied, given the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission’s advice (Quality Bulletin #7-2026) that minimum service times must be based on assessed needs and must not be a standard requirement.” Attach or link the bulletin. If the answer is a policy rather than your assessed need, the Complaints Commissioner (1800 951 822) takes exactly this complaint — free, and anonymously if preferred — and OPAN’s advocates (1800 700 600) can carry it with you. The escalation ladder maps the full route.
Wondering what the right service length costs? The estimator turns any provider’s hourly prices into your actual weekly cost.
Estimate the costsRelated: how to compare provider prices · your provider owes you a statement every month