Support at Home 2026: What the First Year Has Taught Providers About Pricing, Margin, and Cash Flow

Why Home Care Package Pricing Assumptions Are Costing Providers Money in 2026

When Support at Home replaced Home Care Packages and the Commonwealth Home Support Programme on 1 July 2025, most providers made a reasonable assumption: that their existing pricing structures would translate across to the new model with minor adjustments. Twelve months later, the financial data tells a different story. Providers who carried their HCP pricing assumptions into Support at Home without rebuilding their cost models from the ground up are now experiencing margin compression of 8–15 percentage points on home care services — and many do not yet know why.

The core problem is structural. Home Care Packages operated on a package-level funding model where the provider received a lump sum and managed costs within it. Support at Home operates on a service-level funding model where each service type has a defined price and the provider must deliver within that price. The administrative overhead, care coordination costs, and unallocated time that were absorbed into HCP package management fees are now exposed as direct cost items — and they are eroding margin at a rate most providers did not model.

If your organisation transitioned to Support at Home without rebuilding your pricing model from a zero-based cost perspective, this article provides the framework to diagnose the damage and implement a recovery plan. Steven Taylor (MBA, CPA, FMVA) has worked with aged care providers through the Support at Home transition and the patterns below reflect what the financial data consistently shows.

The Three Margin Traps in Support at Home Pricing

Providers experiencing margin compression under Support at Home are typically falling into one or more of three structural pricing traps. Understanding which trap applies to your organisation is the first step in the recovery process.

Trap 1: Underpriced Care Coordination

Under Home Care Packages, care coordination was funded through the package management fee — typically 15–20% of the package value. Under Support at Home, care coordination is a separately priced service with a defined hourly rate. Providers who priced their care coordination at or below the Support at Home price guide rate without accounting for the full cost of coordination — including assessment time, review meetings, family communication, and system administration — are delivering care coordination at a loss on every client.

The financial impact is significant. A provider with 200 Support at Home clients spending an average of 2.5 hours per month on care coordination, priced at $95/hour against a true cost of $130/hour, is losing $8,750 per month — $105,000 per year — on care coordination alone. This is a recoverable loss, but only if the pricing model is rebuilt to reflect actual cost.

Trap 2: Unallocated Worker Time

Support at Home funding is tied to direct service delivery. Travel time, handover time, documentation time, and training time are not separately funded in the same way they were absorbed into HCP package management. Providers who have not built these costs into their direct service pricing are effectively subsidising the government's funding model with their own margin.

A practical benchmark: for every hour of direct care delivered, the true cost to the provider typically includes 15–25 minutes of non-billable worker time. If your pricing model does not account for this ratio, your effective hourly margin is materially lower than your pricing model suggests.

Trap 3: Cash Flow Timing Mismatch

The Support at Home claiming cycle differs from the HCP advance payment model. Under HCP, providers received advance payments that provided a working capital buffer. Under Support at Home, the claiming cycle is more closely tied to service delivery — which means providers with high service volumes and slow claiming processes are experiencing cash flow gaps that did not exist under the previous model.

For a provider delivering $500,000 per month in Support at Home services, a 10-day delay in the claiming cycle represents $166,000 in working capital that must be funded from reserves or credit facilities. This is a structural cash flow issue, not a temporary timing problem, and it requires a systematic solution.

How to Build a Support at Home Pricing Model That Protects Your Organisation

Rebuilding your Support at Home pricing model requires a zero-based approach — starting from actual cost and working up to price, rather than starting from the price guide and working backwards. The following framework provides the structure for this process.

Step 1: Build a True Cost Model for Each Service Type

For each service type you deliver under Support at Home, calculate the true cost per hour of service delivery. This includes: direct worker cost (award rate + on-costs + superannuation), non-billable worker time (travel, documentation, handover), supervision and quality assurance cost, care coordination cost allocated to the service, and overhead allocation (administration, insurance, compliance, technology).

Most providers find that their true cost per hour of direct care is 35–50% higher than the direct worker wage rate. If your pricing model is based on worker cost plus a margin, without accounting for these additional cost layers, your margin is being consumed by costs you have not modelled.

Step 2: Map Your Pricing Against the True Cost Model

Once you have a true cost model, map each of your current Support at Home prices against it. Identify services where you are delivering at a loss, services where margin is adequate, and services where you have pricing headroom. This analysis will typically reveal that 2–4 service types are loss-making and are being cross-subsidised by higher-margin services.

Step 3: Implement a Repricing Strategy

Where your pricing is below true cost, you have three options: reprice to cost-plus, redesign the service delivery model to reduce cost, or exit the service type. The right answer depends on your client mix, competitive position, and strategic priorities. A aged care funding and AN-ACC advisory engagement can help you model the financial impact of each option before you commit to a direction.

For context, the Support at Home pricing strategy framework published on this site provides the foundational methodology. The 2026 update is that providers now have 12 months of actual cost data to validate their models — and the providers who are using that data to reprice are recovering 6–12 percentage points of margin.

Cash Flow Under Support at Home: The New Claiming Cycle and What It Means for Liquidity

The Support at Home claiming cycle requires providers to submit claims for services delivered, with payment following the claim processing cycle. For providers accustomed to the HCP advance payment model, this represents a fundamental change in working capital management.

The practical implication is that your organisation needs a minimum working capital buffer equal to 30–45 days of Support at Home service delivery costs. For a provider delivering $300,000 per month in Support at Home services, this means maintaining $300,000–$450,000 in accessible working capital at all times. If your current reserves are below this level, you are operating with a structural liquidity risk.

The solution is a rolling cash flow forecast that models your Support at Home claiming cycle alongside your other revenue streams. The 13-week cash flow forecast for aged care provides the framework for building this model. The key adaptation for Support at Home is to model the claiming cycle explicitly — mapping service delivery dates to claim submission dates to expected payment dates — so you can identify cash flow gaps before they become liquidity crises.

Board Reporting for Support at Home: The KPIs Your Board Must See

Support at Home has introduced new financial complexity that most aged care boards are not yet equipped to monitor. The following KPIs should be added to your monthly board reporting pack to provide adequate oversight of your Support at Home financial performance.

• Support at Home margin by service type — the margin on each service type, compared to your true cost model
• Care coordination cost ratio — care coordination cost as a percentage of total Support at Home revenue
• Claiming cycle days — average days from service delivery to payment receipt
• Working capital coverage ratio — current working capital as a multiple of monthly Support at Home service delivery costs
• Client mix by funding level — distribution of clients across Support at Home funding levels, with revenue concentration risk flagged
• Unallocated worker time ratio — non-billable worker time as a percentage of total worker hours

The aged care board reporting framework provides the broader context for integrating these Support at Home KPIs into your existing board pack. The goal is a board pack that gives your directors a clear, forward-looking view of your Support at Home financial position — not just a retrospective P&L.

The 90-Day Repricing Action Plan

If your organisation is experiencing margin compression under Support at Home, the following 90-day action plan provides a structured recovery pathway.

Days 1–30: Diagnose

Build a true cost model for each Support at Home service type. Map current pricing against true cost. Identify loss-making services and quantify the annual margin impact. Assess your current working capital position against the 30–45 day buffer requirement. Present findings to the board with a clear statement of the financial risk.

Days 31–60: Design

Develop repricing options for loss-making services. Model the financial impact of each option, including client retention risk. Design a revised claiming process to reduce the claiming cycle by 5–10 days. Develop a working capital management plan if reserves are below the required buffer.

Days 61–90: Implement

Implement repricing for loss-making services, with client communication managed carefully to minimise attrition. Implement the revised claiming process. Establish the Support at Home KPI dashboard for board reporting. Review and adjust the 13-week cash flow forecast to reflect the new pricing and claiming model.

Providers who complete this 90-day process typically recover 6–12 percentage points of margin and reduce their claiming cycle by 7–12 days. At $300,000 per month in Support at Home revenue, a 10 percentage point margin improvement represents $360,000 per year in recovered contribution — sufficient to justify a fractional CFO services for aged care providers engagement many times over.

How CFO Insights Can Help

Steven Taylor (MBA, CPA, FMVA) has worked with aged care providers through the Support at Home transition, building pricing models, cash flow forecasts, and board reporting frameworks that reflect the operational reality of the new funding model. With 18+ years of experience managing budgets exceeding $500 million across aged care, NDIS, and healthcare, Steven brings the sector-specific expertise that generic financial advisers cannot replicate.

If your organisation is experiencing margin compression, cash flow uncertainty, or board reporting gaps under Support at Home, a 30-minute discovery call will identify the specific financial levers available to your organisation. There is no slide deck, no pitch, and no pressure — just a direct conversation about your numbers and what they are telling you.