Support at Home prices released

The Department of Health and Aged Care published the summary of indicative support at home prices on Monday evening, with the cost of domestic assistance – such as general house cleaning – ranging from $83 to $109 an hour, and personal care – such as assistance with the self-administration of medication and non-clinical continence management – between $85 and $115 an hour.

StewartBrown partner David Sinclair said it was unlikely these prices would deter people from using domestic assistance or personal care services, as they were the median prices currently offered but providers expressed otherwise.

Whiddon chief executive officer Chris Mamarelis told Australian Ageing Agenda last week it was important that domestic assistance was not disincentivised, as the service was much more than just cleaning someone’s home.

“If you go out and visit a client as part of a home care service, there’s banter, there are relationships, there’s catching up on what’s happened over the past week, identifying needs for the week ahead,” he told AAA.

“All of that is super important in terms of the senior Australians who are looking after their wellbeing and keeping them in their home.”

While Mr Mamarelis acknowledged that existing clients would have their funding and fees grandfathered, he held concerns for new clients coming into the system during a cost of living crisis.

“I know anecdotally with conversations I’ve had with senior Australians around this, that given cost of living, the cost of living challenges people are experiencing, any increase in contribution is going to impact the amount of service that they can engage in. So, there’s definitely concerns out there and that’s something that we’re going to have to keep working on as we go forward,” he said.

“What’s really important is how we keep bringing people into this vital service when there’s this shift away and they’ll be disincentivised to utilise it and that’s going to be a real challenge.”

AAA has reached out to Mr Mamarelis for additional comment now that the indicative prices have been released.

Mr Sinclair told AAA that as long as the pricing properly recompenses providers for their costs, he doesn’t see clients being deterred as a major issue, and encourages providers to look at this move to a more traditional pricing structure as a positive thing.

“It’ll be providers providing services and they’ll have a price for a service – which is like any other sector or industry or whatever you want to call it – whereas at the moment, it was a unique situation where consumers were being charged for administration as a separate service and so forth. So I think there’s an opportunity for the sector to align itself with a more traditional service delivery model,” he told AAA.

The summary states more than 300 Home Care Package providers contributed to the survey on what they intended to charge following the commencement of the new Support at Home program – representing more than a third of all HCP providers.

However, in the comments of his LinkedIn post about the new pricing, Feros Care reform manager and quality lead Ben Happ questioned whether this meant 600 providers had therefore not engaged in the pricing reform process, or potentially were unaware of where to start with unit pricing under a SaH model.

The department has also provided a Guidance for Setting Support at Home prices fact sheet for providers, while the summary fact sheet includes suggestions for action that can be taken by consumers if they feel their providers pricing is unreasonable.

In an article for AAA Minister for Aged Care Anika Wells wrote prices should not be seen as price caps but guidance. With provides continuing to set their own prices for services until 1 July 2026.

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