The National summary of Support at Home prices is the department’s comparison tool
for participants: for each service, the median price providers charged and the range in which
the middle half of prices fell. The first edition, published 19 May 2026, covered November
and December 2025. Its own notes said The next summary is scheduled for publication in July
2026
, covering January to March. That edition appeared on 27 October. Its data is current
to 28 August 2026, and like the first it says plainly: These are not price caps and are not
recommended prices.
We read it line by line against the first edition, which we analysed in August in our piece on where the price spread sits. The short answer is that the market barely moved. Of 73 services with a median in both editions, 32 are unchanged, 15 rose and 26 fell, and only eight moved by $10 or more.
Where the medians moved by $10 or more
| Service | Unit | Nov to Dec 2025 | Jan to Mar 2026 | Median change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Community and centre-based respite | 1 hour | $130 ($100 to $196) | $158 ($100 to $198) | +$28 |
| Art therapist | 1 hour | $120 ($81 to $249) | $148 ($61 to $250) | +$28 |
| Continence management (non-clinical) | 1 hour | $82 ($32 to $149) | $100 ($46 to $170) | +$18 |
| Care management | 1 hour | $120 ($30 to $150) | $130 ($120 to $150) | +$10 |
| Digital education and support | 1 hour | $110 ($61 to $133) | $99 ($66 to $130) | −$11 |
| Assistance with home maintenance and repairs | 1 hour | $150 ($113 to $300) | $132 ($100 to $286) | −$18 |
| Cultural support | 1 hour | $129 ($95 to $173) | $110 ($95 to $260) | −$19 |
| Osteopath | 30 min | $118 ($100 to $130) | $90 ($75 to $110) | −$28 |
All figures as published in the two editions. The change column is our arithmetic.
Care management is the one that matters. It is the service that organises all the others, and in the first edition it had the widest spread of any one-hour service: a bottom-quarter line of $30 against a top-quarter line of $150, so the top quarter of providers charged at least five times what the bottom quarter did. In January to March the bottom line is $120 and the top is still $150. The median rose $10 to $130. The 30-minute care management line barely changed ($70, with a range of $60 to $75, against $70 and $63 to $75). The summary does not explain the change, and with two editions we cannot say whether low-priced care management disappeared or was billed differently.
Elsewhere the wide spreads are still wide. Exercise physiology still runs from $44 to $204 an hour at the quartiles, art therapy from $61 to $250, and home maintenance and repairs from $100 to $286. Cultural support widened, from a top-quarter line of $173 to $260. Nursing, cleaning, laundry, shopping and social support stayed tight: general house cleaning is $110, with a range of $100 to $117, exactly as before.
Five prices disappeared
Five lines that carried a price in the first edition now read N/A: group social support (one
hour and 30 minutes), chiropractor (one hour), diversional therapist (one hour) and meal
delivery, which was $18 a meal at the median. The summary’s explanation covers two
different things at once: Prices for services with a low number of claims, or data quality
issues, are marked with an asterisk
. It does not say which applies to which service. Meal
delivery and group social support are everyday services, and a three-month window should hold
more claims than a two-month one, so a reader comparing a meals quote has lost the one national
figure they had.
Personal care, before it changed category
From 1 October 2026 personal care moved into the clinical supports category, where
no one will pay any contributions for clinical care services
. The department’s
consumer protections fact sheet lists, among its protections, close monitoring by us and
the Commission of any changes in the price of personal care
as it moves. We set out
why that change matters
on 30 September. Both editions describe prices from before the move, so these are the
baseline:
| Service | 1 hour, Nov to Dec | 1 hour, Jan to Mar | 30 min, Nov to Dec | 30 min, Jan to Mar |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Assistance with self-care and activities of daily living | $115 | $113 | $65 | $63 |
| Assistance with the self-administration of medication | $110 | $110 | $60 | $60 |
| Continence management (non-clinical) | $82 | $100 | $55 | $58 |
Two half-hour visits still cost more than one hour-long visit in all three: $126 against $113 for self-care, $120 against $110 for medication and $116 against $100 for continence management, on our arithmetic from the medians. A participant on a fixed budget who can combine visits still has that lever.
What this edition cannot tell us, and what we got wrong in August
In August we wrote that the second edition would be the first real evidence on whether transparency alone moved prices. It is not, and the dates show why. The January to March quarter ended on 31 March. The first summary was published on 19 May. Every price in this edition was charged before any participant had a published national benchmark to compare against, so whatever moved prices in the program’s first five months, it was not publication. We should have checked the dates before framing it that way, and we have added a dated note to the August piece.
The first quarter that includes any time with a published benchmark is April to June 2026, and only its last six weeks. The first full quarter is July to September.
The schedule has gone quiet
The consumer protections fact sheet of 29 May lists, as one of the protections that came with
the deferred price caps, publishing a new National Summary of Support at Home Prices each
quarter on our website
. The first edition said the department expected to publish quarterly
and gave July as the next date. The second edition says nothing about when the next one will
appear: the quarterly line and the scheduled date are gone from its notes.
The gap between the end of a quarter and its summary has also grown. The first edition came 139 days after its period ended; this one came 210 days after. On our arithmetic, if that pace holds, a summary for October to December 2026, the first quarter after personal care changed category, would appear around the end of July 2027.
Our view. A comparison tool is only as useful as it is current, and this one is the protection the department chose instead of a cap. A participant choosing a provider this week is comparing against prices from the first quarter of the year. The department should either publish the remaining 2026 quarters on a stated timetable or say plainly that the quarterly promise in its own protections fact sheet has changed. Silence leaves participants and families to find out by checking, as we have been doing since August.
What to watch
The April to June 2026 edition, the first to include any weeks after the first summary was published, and later the October to December 2026 edition, which is the one that can show whether personal care prices moved after 1 October. We will read each when it lands and report what it shows.
A note on the figures
Every median and quartile here is transcribed from the two editions of the National summary of Support at Home prices, which we downloaded as PDFs and read directly. To compare them we extracted every row of both tables (85 rows each, in the same order in both editions) and paired them service by service and unit by unit, then checked the rows quoted above against the PDFs by eye. A row counts as comparable when both editions publish a median: 73 do. The change figures, the counts of medians that rose, fell or stayed put, the two half-hours arithmetic and the 139 and 210 day gaps are ours. The end of July 2027 figure is a projection that assumes the current pace, not a date anyone has announced.
What we have not done. These are quartiles, not the highest and lowest prices charged. The two windows differ in length (two months against three) and in season, the first edition’s period carried a transitional claims extension, and the figures are national: they pool city, regional and remote prices and exclude weekend and public holiday services. A change in a median can come from providers changing prices or from a different mix of providers and services being claimed, and the summary does not let us tell those apart. Nothing here is advice about any provider, and we name none. We did not ask the department about the schedule before publishing; its answer will be added here if it gives one.
Sources
How this piece was made. Researched and written by AI systems, under editorial rules a human publisher sets, from the 4 primary sources below. How The Long View works.
- Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, National summary of Support at Home prices, January to March 2026 (PDF, 8 pages, publication date 27 October 2026, downloaded and read 28 October 2026): every January to March 2026 median and quartile above, the services marked N/A and the reason given for the asterisk, that the figures are not price caps or recommended prices, that no one pays a contribution for clinical care, that data is current as of 28 August 2026, and the absence of any statement about the next edition.
- Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, National summary of Support at Home prices, November to December 2025 (PDF, 8 pages, published 19 May 2026, read again 28 October 2026): every November to December 2025 figure above, and its notes saying summaries were expected quarterly and the next was scheduled for July 2026.
- Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, Consumer protections for Support at Home prices (PDF, publication date 29 May 2026, read 28 October 2026): the protection of publishing a new national summary each quarter, and close monitoring of personal care prices as the category changes from 1 October 2026.
- Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, Support at Home pricing resources (collection page, read 28 October 2026): that the January to March 2026 edition is now listed beside the November to December 2025 edition, and no later edition.
Work in aged care, or read this data differently? The correction form is on our tips page; we check every correction against the cited sources and log the outcome here.