With a unique set of needs around infection control, mental health and security, aged care providers are rolling out innovative solutions.
A new era for aged care in Australia was ushered in on 1 November 2025. It was the date the country’s new Aged Care Act 2024 came into effect, one built on the rights of older people for the first time.
The Act upholds older people’s independence, choice, privacy, communication, connection and equitable access to safe and quality funded aged care services, among other rights. This reform responds directly to recommendations from the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety (2021), which found a system in crisis, marred by substandard care, abuse and institutional strain.
Whether or not you believe the Act is ambitious enough to address these problems, a person-centred system is a step forward for aged care residents, as well as any of us lucky enough to have long lives ahead – which, statistics show, is more likely than ever before. It is projected that the number of Australians aged 85 years and over will increase from 515,700 in 2018-19 (two percent of the Australian population) to more than 1.5 million by 2058 (3.7 percent of the population).
New regulations are now in place to set this new era in motion, with pressure on providers to step up.
New regulations
Under the new Act, all providers of Australian Government-funded aged care services must be registered, and the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission will only register providers who show they can deliver safe, quality, rights-based care.
Residential aged care (aged care homes) must comply with the new Statement of Rights, Code of Conduct and strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards.
What should facilities managers know?
Every part of the sector is ideally shifting focus to improve care for older people, and facilities management
is no exception.
Facilities and maintenance managers should pay particular attention to strengthened Aged Care Quality Standard Four:
Environment. This standard ensures that older people receive funded aged care services in a physical environment that is safe, supportive and meets their needs.
A key priority is the implementation of an appropriate infection prevention and control system. Standard Four also has a strong focus on environmental risk assessment.
This means providers must ensure the environment and equipment are routinely cleaned, maintained, safe and fit-for purpose.
Environments must also be welcoming, comfortable and accessible, promoting movement, engagement and inclusion through design. They should enable individuals to move freely both indoors and outdoors. Moreover, facilities should unobtrusively reduce safety risks, optimise useful stimulation and be easy to navigate.
Anchor Excellence CEO Cynthia Payne, a consultant with 35 years’ experience in the sector, says Standard Four – and
the auditing against it – is where facilities management really matters. “That’s preventative maintenance, reactive maintenance and meeting the needs of plant and equipment,” she explains. “It’s a much broader definition, not just the building.”
In residential aged care, facilities management is “quite encompassing”, according to Payne, reaching from technology
to sensors, call-bell systems, heating, ventilation, air conditioning (HVAC), security, kitchens, laundry and more.
When maintenance fails
Beyond the risks they pose to provider registration, failed maintenance systems can have devastating consequences
for residents.
Late last year, Benalla Health was convicted and fined $230,000 after a resident was injured at its aged care facility. The incident in October 2021 saw a 93-year-old resident fall backwards when the back of her reclining chair detached as a staff member tried to move it. She had bone fractures and developed a chest infection, dying a week after the incident.
WorkSafe found that Benalla Health failed to maintain a system of work for ensuring chairs used for transporting residents were regularly assessed for safe functionality, scheduled for preventative maintenance and tagged accordingly.
According to WorkSafe, a simple assessment system for the recliner chairs would have been enough to prevent the incident.
“This is where… having an effective system becomes really important because vulnerable older people are the people at the end of all of this,” Payne says.
Image: National Cancer Institute, Unsplash
New opportunities for asset tracking
The good news is that there is “much more advanced asset tagging” available nowadays. According to Payne, these systems allow FMs to track plant and equipment, extending even to tracking laundry items using radio frequency identification (RFID) – helpful when theft is an issue.
“If you think about it, there are literally hundreds and hundreds of bits of equipment and systems that exist in an aged care home,” she says. “The technology helps navigate that information management and make it much more proactive (just in time) rather than purely reactive (fixing it when it’s broken).”
There is a range of other FM products and technologies on the market that can aid person-centred care. For example, Payne commends the power of the humble light sensor to aid resident navigation while saving energy – “something as simple as having a light over the toilet at night”.
Better air quality and infection control
New HVAC innovations are tackling air quality and infection prevention. A range of factors contribute to poor air quality in homes, according to the National Aged Care Design Principles and Guidelines.
A build-up of CO, CO₂, particulates, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), odours or airborne pathogens can affect health, usability and accessibility. It impairs human performance and social participation, causing fatigue, dizziness, confusion, breathing difficulties and stress.
John Bennett, director of commercial air-conditioning and facility maintenance provider Mechfield FM, has been servicing aged care for 10 years. “Fresh air and the reduction of unpleasant odours contribute to a more dignified and calming environment,” Bennett explains.
He also says cleaner air improves the visitor experience, reducing distress about smell, and allowing longer, more frequent visits, even during flu season.
COVID-19 certainly heightened the importance of airflow and open windows in aged care. However, safety requirements can restrict this. “Dementia wings in particular, due to security requirements, tend to have limited openable windows and doors to allow for fresh air to be introduced, and traditional air-conditioning systems find it hard to cope with controlling odours and reducing pathogen transmission,” Bennett says.
In 2024, Mechfield FM was nominated for an AIRAH Award for the implementation of an advanced ventilation solution designed to enhance air quality, reduce odours and improve infection control at an aged care facility. By integrating energy-efficient heat exchange ventilators, the system provided a continuous supply of fresh air while maintaining environmental comfort and reducing energy consumption.
Maximising security, minimising restriction
Security continues to be a priority for aged care residents with or without dementia. But the Act reminds us of the need to balance security with privacy and autonomy.
RFID technologies are emerging as one possible component in a delicate ecosystem of security. These provide wearable tags to support the location awareness of residents.
According to secure identity products manufacturer, HID, RFIDs allow a timely response to wandering risks without compromising the resident’s freedom to move about the facility. They also support resident privacy, only notifying care teams when attention is required.
Additionally, HID is seeing the growing adoption of mobile identity and multi-factor access models, where authentication methods can be matched to the context or risk level of a space.
“Together, these technologies support a more person-centred approach by allowing security to operate quietly in the background– enhancing safety while preserving dignity, independence and day-to-day ease of movement,” a HID spokesperson says.
Anti-fall tech of the future
Falls remain a critical issue in residential aged care affecting quality of life for older people. According to the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, over one-third of residents experience a fall each year, and 20 to 30 percent of these incidents result in serious injuries.
In response, the Royal Commission called for robust systems for falls risk management, including the integration of emerging sensor-based technologies.
Unlike reactive alerts triggered at the time of or just before a fall, sensor-based systems detect early indicators of increased fall risk, such as changes in sleep patterns, gait or activity levels, and support timely interventions.
An Australian study published in December 2025 found that sensor-based monitoring systems can be effectively integrated into residential aged care as a proactive, unobtrusive and person-centred approach to falls management, while highlighting the need for further research to validate predictive capabilities and inform sector-wide adoption.
Person-centred FM
Payne has observed technologically-driven facilities management becoming the new norm. This is particularly evident in new buildings, which are equipped with increasingly sophisticated systems that are often difficult to retrofit into older facilities.
However, technology isn’t the sole measure of effectiveness. “[When] we’re looking at how the provider actually can
demonstrate against those aged care standards, we’re looking at whether or not they are able to demonstrate an effective facilities management system, and it doesn’t have to be technology driven,” she says. “It could still be a paper and pen scenario. It’s whether or not it’s working. How does it support the workers? How does it support the individuals living in that aged care home, and how does the information and governance that the management needs to demonstrate show that it’s working?”
Main image: Age Cymru, Unsplash
This article first appeared in the March 2026 edition of FM magazine. To download the entire edition for free, click here.
