Catholic Health Australia – Medication Administration in Residential Aged Care (Victoria)

On 9 September 2025, the Victorian Parliament passed the Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substances Amendment (Medication Administration in Residential Aged Care) Act 2025. The Act places a new requirement on registered aged care providers in Victoria to ensure that only registered nurses (RNs), enrolled nurses (ENs) who hold a Board-approved qualification in administration of medicines, and registered health practitioners administer prescribed and dispensed Drugs of Dependence and Schedules 4, 8 and 9 medications to residents who do not self-administer.

The requirement commences on 1 July 2026, with a 90-day grace period meaning no enforcement action will be taken until 29 September 2026. This transition window is among the most compressed applied to a comparable workforce regulation in Australian health or care sectors in recent years, an issue CHA addresses in detail below.

Victoria has been considering this reform for several years, first consulting on changes to medication administration in aged care in 2022. A second round of consultations took place in 2024, which included a sector-wide survey of medication administration practices.

The legislation was introduced and passed in September 2025, with $7.6 million earmarked in the 2025-26 Victorian Budget to support the sector to implement the reforms. Included within this were the Exposure Draft Regulations which prescribe circumstances in which a person other than a nurse or registered health practitioner may administer medication. The exemptions are limited to unforeseen, time-bound events affecting nursing availability, and are explicitly not intended to replace workforce planning or to create a routine alternative to nurse-led medication administration.

CHA acknowledges that the legislation has been passed and that limited legislative change is anticipated at this stage. This submission therefore focuses on the actions that we believe should be prioritised within the Regulations and during the transition period to ensure that the reform achieves its stated objective of improving medication safety without creating unintended consequences for residents, the aged care workforce, and provider viability.