2021/22 Price Guide Update

The NDIA have just released the 2021/22 Price Guide update and, as expected, it’s a bit of an anticlimax this time around.

Earlier this month, the Agency announced their plans to push major Price Guide reviews back to the first half of each financial year. So even though tonight’s update is a bit light on, we will hear more about the future of the Price Guide later this year.

As for today’s update, here are the key things you need to know:

Price increases

Prices dependent on the Disability Support Worker Cost Model have been increased by 2.95% to accommodate the increase in super guarantee percentage and the Fair Work Commission increase in the minimum wage. This includes:

• Assistance with self-care activities and establishment fees

• Self management capacity building

• Assistance in SIL

• Assistance to access community, social and recreational activities, including group supports and establishment fees

• Supports in employment

• Psychosocial Recovery Coaching

• Tenancy support

• Life transition planning

• Individual skills development

• Transition through school and to further education

• Capacity building by a Plan Manager

• Training for carers/parents

Supports related to bricks and mortar have been indexed by 1.1%, which, as Brent wrote earlier this month, falls well and truly short of the increase in property values. This includes:

• Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA)

• Medium Term Accommodation (MTA)

• Centre Capital Cost

The price for Short Term Accommodation (STA) and Assistance sits across both of the categories above so has increased by somewhere between 2 and 3%, depending on the day/time.

No other prices have been increased and there’s no changes to the way prices are structured.

No increase to participant plans

There’s no easy way to say this: the NDIA are not going to increase participant budgets to accommodate these price increases. According to the NDIA, “most participants will be able to continue to purchase the supports they need from their existing plan funds and will not be impacted by changes to price limits”. They go on to say that have a process in place that monitors plans and that people can request plan reviews if they’re concerned but we don’t think we’re alone in being hardly filled with confidence by that assurance.

Temporary Transformation Payment (TTP)

TTP has reduced a further 1.5% as scheduled, bringing it down to 4.5%.

Temporary COVID measures

Temporary COVID measures have been updated with the rapidly changing situation around the country. You can read those in the Addendum.

Notional price limits

This is a change to claiming processes, not pricing. Supports that are not subject to price limits (like transport) now have a “notional price limit” of $1. So if a provider and participant agree, for example, to charge $2.40 per kilometer in a modified vehicle, the provider will claim 2.4 units of transport per kilometer @ $1 each.

A new name

The Price Guide has a new name! It shall henceforth be known as NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits - or so say the NDIA. Somehow I can’t see that catching on…

Tonight’s update also included the NDIA’s hotly anticipated response to last year’s SIL consultation papers, which we will write up shortly. You can read all of today's releases here.