The Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority (IHACPA) has released the Support at Home Pricing Advice 2026-27 and the Support at Home Cost Collection 2025 Final Report.
The pricing advice was developed based on IHACPA's annual cost collection and after extensive public consultation, ensuring IHACPA's advice is directly informed by the costs of delivering in-home aged care services.
To inform the pricing advice, IHACPA's Support at Home Cost Collection 2025 captured and analysed detailed cost data from 135 services, covering over 35,000 clients to produce a comprehensive dataset. This cost collection prioritised participation from providers who had not previously taken part, as well as those delivering services to underrepresented groups. This includes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, and rural and remote populations.
As part of the public consultation held from 11 June to 18 July 2025, IHACPA received 220 submissions from a wide range of stakeholders. This includes submissions from in-home aged care participants and their families, carers and representatives, providers and the aged care workforce, government departments and agencies, researchers and peak bodies.
IHACPA's Chair, Mr David Tune AO PSM said,
We're pleased to release our pricing and costing advice for the Support at Home service list. This work is central to supporting older people to stay at home for longer together with access to quality aged care services that meets their needs.
'IHACPA's pricing advice is grounded in evidence, informed by real cost data and direct engagement across the sector. I would like to thank everyone who participated in our cost collections and consultation last year. Stakeholder feedback is vital to ensuring our advice reflects not only financial considerations, but also the practical aspects of delivering in-home aged care,' Mr Tune added.
Key elements of IHACPA's pricing advice include:
- unit prices for each service on the Support at Home service list
- delineation of unit prices for care management into clinical and non-clinical care management
- a separate combined price for team-based care management which is assumed to be the same unit price as home support care management
- information about the confidence intervals around the unit prices and distribution of costs observed
- the labour, non-labour and administration components of the unit prices.
In developing this advice, IHACPA accounted for recent Fair Work Commission decisions, superannuation guarantee increases, and the indexation of historical cost data.
IHACPA's pricing advice to the Australian Government helps inform funding decisions for Support at Home.
The recommended prices in IHACPA's pricing advice do not present a price cap, benchmark or guidance for aged care providers when setting their prices. The Minister for Health and Ageing is responsible for determining price caps for in-home aged care services and the timing of announcement for prices for services on the Support at Home service list.
