On 19 May 2026, Minister for Aged Care and Seniors Sam Rae released the Government's Strengthening Consumer Protections for Older Australians package, which confirms that the formal Support at Home price caps scheduled to commence on 1 July 2026 will be deferred. In their place, the Government has announced a set of transparency, monitoring, and enforcement measures aimed at addressing concerns about pricing in the Support at Home market without setting a hard ceiling against what the Minister described as an unstable baseline.

For Allied Health providers, who are operating as associated providers under a registered Support at Home provider, the practical consequence is clear: providers can continue to negotiate their unit prices with the registered provider they subcontract to. The pricing mechanics that have been in place since the program commenced on 1 November 2025 remain in place for the foreseeable future.

When Support at Home commenced on 1 November 2025, providers continued to set their own prices, with the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority (IHACPA) commissioned to develop service-level price caps to take effect on 1 July 2026. Those caps were to apply to each service on the Support at Home service list, with the capped price required to cover all costs of delivery including labour, package management, travel, and overheads.

The 1 July 2026 cap was the moment the Support at Home pricing environment was meant to converge with a single national maximum for each service, in much the same way the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits operate.

The Government has now confirmed that the formal price cap implementation is being deferred until there is greater confidence in the stability of the market. The reasoning given is that price caps only work if they are set at the right level — high enough to keep the sector viable, low enough to genuinely protect older Australians — and that setting caps against a higher-than-usual baseline driven by global cost pressures and supply chain volatility would risk poor outcomes for both participants and providers.

In place of the caps, the package introduces five operational measures:

• Refund powers and regulatory action — the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission has been empowered to order refunds where providers are found to be overcharging, take regulatory action against providers not meeting monthly statement requirements, and publicly report on investigations and enforcement.
• Quarterly national pricing transparency — a new National Summary of Support at Home Prices will be published each quarter, showing the median and the range of prices charged across the market.
• Personal care monitoring as it shifts into Clinical Care — the Department and the Commission will specifically monitor the pricing of personal care services as they transition into the Clinical Care category, building on the earlier decision to remove out-of-pocket costs for showering, dressing, and continence services.
• Two-per-year price increase guidance — providers are encouraged to limit price increases to no more than twice per year, giving older people certainty when budgeting their packages.
• A pricing working group — convened with OPAN, COTA Australia, Ageing Australia, and the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission to focus on a more robust definition of "reasonable" pricing, further consultation on the multi-provider model, and guidance for older people who self-manage their packages.

Additional funding has been confirmed for OPAN to expand financial advocacy and for COTA to deliver consumer education on service agreements, aged care rights, and price comparison.

The Aged Care Act 2024 distinguishes between registered providers (the entities receiving funding from the Commonwealth and accountable to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission) and associated providers (organisations delivering services on behalf of a registered provider — effectively subcontractors).

With the formal caps now deferred, several things follow for Allied Health practices:

• Continue to negotiate unit prices with your registered providers. The pricing environment for associated providers has not changed. The same commercial conversation — covering hourly rates, travel, non face to face time and cancellation terms — remains the mechanism for setting your unit prices.
• Use the new National Summary of Support at Home Prices as a benchmark. Once the quarterly summary is published, registered providers will increasingly reference it when negotiating with associated providers. Allied Health practices should expect to be asked how their unit prices sit against the published median for each service, and should be prepared to articulate the cost drivers behind their rate. Effectively the benchmark will act as an artificial cap.
• Expect price increase discipline. The encouragement to limit price increases to two per year applies to registered providers in their participant-facing pricing, but registered providers will pass that discipline through to their subcontract arrangements. Allied Health practices should plan annual or six-monthly price reviews rather than ad hoc increases.
• Watch the Clinical Care category carefully. As personal care transitions into the Clinical Care category, the regulatory focus on what sits inside that fully-subsidised category will sharpen. Allied Health services delivered under Clinical Care remain fully government-funded, but expect tighter scrutiny on scope, documentation, and outcomes.
• The "reasonable pricing" definition is the one to watch. The working group convened with OPAN, COTA, Ageing Australia, and the Commission has been tasked with developing a more robust definition of "reasonable" pricing. That definition will eventually flow through to what registered providers can pay associated providers without challenge, and will likely become the benchmark used in audit and complaint settings before any formal price cap is reintroduced.

For Allied Health practices working across multiple registered Support at Home providers, operational efficiency is the difference between profitable participation and a margin-squeeze. splose is built for exactly this complexity:

• Case management tracks Support at Home budgets so practices can see the remaining budget per participant in real time.
• Progress notes can be structured to meet the evidence requirements registered providers need for their monthly statement and audit obligations to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission.
• Batch invoicing generates compliant invoices to multiple registered providers in a single workflow, with the line-item detail registered providers require to claim through Services Australia.
• Embeddable referral forms allow registered providers to refer directly into your waitlist, creating the client record and triaging by service type and location automatically.

The deferral of Support at Home price caps is not a wind-back of the reform — it is a recognition that the market needs to settle before a hard ceiling can be set at a viable level. For Allied Health providers operating as associated providers, the operational direction is unchanged: continue to negotiate unit prices and subcontract structures directly with your registered providers, and use the incoming quarterly National Summary of Support at Home Prices as the new reference point for those negotiations.

The next milestones to watch are the publication of the first National Summary of Support at Home Prices, the working group outputs on the definition of "reasonable" pricing, and the eventual reintroduction of formal price caps once the market is judged to have stabilised.

About the author: Scott Lynch is the Founder and Managing Director of Community Therapy, a leading multi-disciplinary Allied Health practice. Physiotherapist by background, Scott combines his deep clinical knowledge with a passion for community-based care, overseeing a diverse team of health professionals dedicated to supporting and empowering their clients to live enriched lives.