Support at home pricing is an evidence question before it is a commercial one. The test sits in section 273-15 of the Aged Care Rules 2025, made under the Aged Care Act 2024: the price must be reasonable, meaning it reflects what it actually costs you to deliver that service to that participant. Since May 2026 the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission has been able to order refunds where it finds overcharging. The gap between a price you can explain and a price you simply set now has a dollar figure attached to it.
Key Takeaways
- A reasonable price is a costed price. No build, no defence.
- Publish the price you most frequently charge for each service on My Aged Care and your own website, and review it at least every two months.
- Price caps were deferred in May 2026 with no new commencement date, and the enforcement package that replaced them includes refund powers.
- Personal care moves into the clinical supports contribution category on 1 October 2026 and its pricing is under specific surveillance.
- A price change is a governance event with a named approver, not an administrative update.
The Legislated Test for Reasonable Pricing
Three obligations operate together. Prices must be reasonable, reported to the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, and transparent to the participant through your website and their service agreement. The Commission sets this out in its regulatory bulletin on Support at Home pricing requirements, RB 2026-1, the clearest statement available of what the regulator will look for.
The structural change from the old package model is that the unit price is the whole price. Package management, administration and travel sit inside it and can no longer be surcharged. Care management is funded separately, through a ten per cent deduction from each participant's quarterly budget into a pooled account, and must not be buried in the price of other services. Participants make no contribution towards clinical supports, care management included. These sit on the same compliance register as every other one of the obligations that attach to registered providers.
Build a Costing File for Each Service Type
The department's guidance on prices for Support at Home participants lists what a price may legitimately recover. Treat that list as the index of your costing file, and hold one file per service type.
What the unit price may recover
- Labour - award rates, penalties, leave and on-costs for the classification delivering the service.
- Package management and administration - rostering, scheduling, finance, quality and the systems behind them.
- Travel - worker travel time and vehicle cost across your real service geography.
- Sub-contracting - the invoiced cost where you do not deliver directly.
- A margin for the cost of capital - vehicles, equipment and premises used in delivery.
- Transition costs - only where they genuinely relate to delivery, never ordinary business costs relabelled.
Two deductions matter as much as the inclusions. You cannot charge for a cost you are already funded for, so thin market grants and other program funding must be netted off before the unit price lands. And you cannot bill more time than you delivered, which makes rostering discipline a pricing control.
The cost of delivery evidence the Commission describes examining already exists somewhere in your organisation: rosters and timesheets, payroll or general ledger extracts showing labour cost against billed services, travel records, sub-contractor invoices, and the record of who approved the resulting rate. Pull those into one place per service type now, while you can still reconstruct the reasoning, rather than under a notice to produce. This is the moment to document your financial governance controls so the method survives a change of finance manager.
Published Prices on My Aged Care and the Two-Month Cycle
What you publish is not an aspirational rate card. It is the price you most frequently charged for each service type during standard business hours over the preceding two-month period. Pricing goes directly into the My Aged Care Service and Support Portal, the only approved form. A PDF schedule or a link to your website does not satisfy the obligation. On your own site you publish the most frequently charged price for every service delivered in the past twelve months, across standard hours, non-standard hours, weekends and public holidays.
Review published prices at least every two months and update within thirty days of each period closing. The department compares invoiced prices against what you have published, so drift between the two is visible without anyone complaining first. Where an agreed price sits above your published price, the service agreement must record both the price and the reason. An unexplained premium is the easiest finding a regulator can make.
Price Increase Frequency Is Now a Watched Number
In the May 2026 consumer protections package, the government encourages providers to limit price increases to no more than two per year so participants can budget. Read that precisely: it is an encouragement, not a provision of the Rules. It is still the yardstick the department and advocacy bodies will apply, and a third or fourth increase in a year invites the question of why your costing was wrong the first three times.
Each increase needs its own evidence pack: the cost movement that drove it, the effective date, the calculation method, and the record that you agreed the change with affected participants and updated their service agreements. Award movements and indexation are predictable, so plan them as a single scheduled event and review your pricing before the new financial year rather than reacting in pieces.
Deferred Price Caps Raise the Stakes
Caps were due to commence on 1 July 2026 and were deferred in May 2026, with no replacement date announced at the time of writing. The deferral is not relief. It came with a sharper enforcement package: refund orders where overcharging is found, action against providers not issuing monthly statements, public reporting on investigations, and a quarterly National Summary of Support at Home Prices showing the national median and range so participants can see where their provider sits.
Without a cap there is no safe harbour. A capped market lets a provider point at the ceiling and stop arguing. An uncapped market with published medians means every price above the middle of the distribution is a question waiting to be asked, and the only answer is your costing file. Departmental indicative ranges and independent pricing advice are reference points built from survey and cost data, not legal ceilings. Pricing to them without your own costing gives you nothing to show when asked.
Who Approves a Price Change and What the Board Sees
Pricing decisions tend to live with finance and surface at board level only when margin moves. That no longer matches the risk. Name a single approver for each service type's price, require the costing file and the comparison with your published price as the approval papers, and date the decision record.
The board needs a short standing pricing item, not a finance appendix. Useful content is the variance between published and charged prices by service type, the number of agreements carrying an above-published price and why, the price change log against the two-per-year expectation, the status of portal reporting, and any exposure to refund orders. A board that has seen that pack can show it discharged its accountability for pricing decisions. A board that has not will struggle to explain why a problem ran for four reporting periods.
Personal Care Pricing Under Specific Surveillance
From 1 October 2026 personal care, covering showering, dressing and continence support, moves from the independence contribution category into clinical supports, and participants stop contributing to its cost. Both the department and the Commission have said they will specifically monitor personal care prices through that transition.
The risk is obvious once stated. When the participant no longer feels the price, the usual market discipline on that service disappears. Any movement in your personal care rate around that date will be read against a stated monitoring intention, so hold what you can, document any genuinely cost-driven increase, and give personal care its own costing file rather than sharing one with domestic assistance.
Your Costing File Is the Evidence That Settles It
Every obligation here converges on one artefact. The published price, the service agreement, the monthly statement and the board paper are all downstream of a defensible build for each service type. Providers who can produce that build within a day of being asked will treat refund powers as background. Providers who cannot will be reconstructing a rationale while the Commission forms its own view of what the service should have cost.
Related Resources
- Fee Transparency and Financial Governance Policy
- Governance and Board Accountability Policy
- Record Keeping Policy Template
- Quality Improvement Policy Template
- Getting Support at Home Monthly Statements Right
- Governa Policy Mapping to Standards
- Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission
Frequently Asked Questions
What makes a Support at Home price reasonable in law?
Section 273-15 of the Aged Care Rules 2025 requires the price to reflect the cost of delivering that service to that participant. Reasonableness is assessed against your actual costs, not a market average, so two providers can defensibly charge different prices where their cost bases genuinely differ.
How often must we update our published prices on My Aged Care?
At least every two months, reporting through the My Aged Care Service and Support Portal within thirty days of each period closing. The figure reported is the price you most frequently charged during standard business hours in that period.
Are we limited to two price increases a year?
Not as a matter of law. The two-per-year limit announced with the May 2026 consumer protections is an encouragement, but it functions as a monitoring expectation, and exceeding it without a clear cost explanation invites scrutiny.
Can we charge separately for travel or package management?
No. Those costs must sit inside the unit price. Care management is funded separately through a ten per cent deduction from the participant's quarterly budget and must not be loaded into the price of other services.
What happens if the Commission decides we overcharged?
It can require you to explain or change your prices, apply conditions to your registration, and since May 2026 order refunds of overcharged amounts. Refusing to comply can lead to an infringement notice or a variation of your registration.
