Towards an Aged Care Pricing Framework Consultation Paper

IHACPA will provide independent aged care costing and pricing advice to the Commonwealth Government. This aims to ensure that Commonwealth Government aged care funding is directly informed by the actual costs of delivering care. IHACPA’s advice will inform Commonwealth Government decisions on residential aged care and respite care funding from 1 July 2023.

IHACPA invited all interested people or organisations to make a submission. Feedback will inform the development of the Pricing Framework. Submissions for this consultation closed at 5pm AEDT on Friday 14 October 2022.

IHACPA is focused on ensuring that submissions are representative of the Australian aged care system and the community. IHACPA therefore seeks submissions reflecting a wide range of organisations, roles, backgrounds and perspectives.

Purpose of the Pricing Framework for Australian Aged Care Services

The Pricing Framework will be the key policy document for IHACPA in aged care. It will underpin IHACPA’s approach to providing aged care costing and pricing advice to the Government. It will guide how IHACPA develops pricing advice. It will also outline how any required pricing adjustments are developed to account for unavoidable cost variations faced by providers in delivering services for some groups of people receiving care.

Consultation to develop a new Pricing Framework for Australian Aged Care Services

The development of the Pricing Framework will be informed by feedback to this consultation paper. IHACPA is committed to ongoing, open and transparent consultation with a broad range of stakeholders in the aged care system.

This consultation paper is the primary mechanism for all stakeholders to provide input into the development of the Framework and provides an opportunity for public consultation on:

• the pricing principles, which will underpin the Framework
• the key challenges for aged care costing and pricing, and how to best address them in the development of the Framework
• the mechanisms that support activity based funding in aged care.

Submissions to the Consultation Paper

Submission options:

• Complete the online submission form
• Email your response in Word, PDF or RTE format to submissions.ihacpa@ihacpa.gov.au
• Handwritten and typed hard copy submissions can also be mailed to:
  Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority
  PO Box 483
  Darlinghurst NSW 1300

Unless respondents specifically request that their submission or parts of their submission should not be released, all submissions will be published on IHACPA’s website after the close of the consultation period. Contact details for all submissions will be removed or redacted from each submission before they are published. 

IHACPA retains, at its absolute discretion, the right not to publish any submissions or part thereof, where it considers it appropriate to do so. Circumstances in which IHACPA may consider making the decision not to publish either the whole submission or part thereof, include that the submission:

• may contain information that is commercially sensitive.
• is factually contentious – that is, contains data, methodologies or processes that are questionable.
• raises individual privacy concerns.

If the submission was emailed to IHACPA in an email format, or submitted through the online submission form, the submission will be reproduced in a Word or PDF format for publication. Handwritten and typed hard copy submissions will be scanned into PDF documents and uploaded to this page.

If you have further questions about the consultation, please contact IHACPA via email at submissions.ihacpa@ihacpa.gov.au or by phone at +61 2 8215 1100.