Picture an older person opening their monthly statement. The price of a regular service has gone up, and nobody discussed it with them. Part of that price also covers care management their budget already funds separately.
The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission has found evidence that one Support at Home provider may have done exactly that – and is now under formal investigation.
The case emerged from a prudential review the Commission ran between January and June 2026. The results should prompt questions in boardrooms well beyond the one provider involved.
What the review found
The Commission selected 25 Support at Home providers it considered higher risk based on their compliance history. It examined pricing transparency, service agreements, financial reporting and prudential management.
The outcomes:
- 4 providers were fully compliant
- 18 fixed identified issues after working with the Commission
- 2 remain under close supervision
- 1 is under formal investigation.
The Commission found evidence the investigated provider may have included care management costs in service delivery prices, changed prices without first discussing and agreeing on them with older people, and failed to hand over information and documents the Commission requested.
The Commission will not name the provider while inquiries continue.
Why the pricing rules matter
Under Support at Home, care management is funded separately from service delivery. Building it into service prices means an older person’s budget effectively pays for the same thing twice.
Commissioner Liz Hefren-Webb left little room for interpretation. “The rules are clear. Providers cannot include care management costs in service prices and must not implement price changes until they have been discussed and agreed with people.”
She framed the issue as one of rights, not paperwork. “Older people have a right to clear information about the services they receive, the prices they pay and how their funding is used.”
The problems were not isolated
The investigation is the headline, but the pattern behind it is the bigger concern.
Across the 25 providers, the Commission found recurring issues:
- Missing or false pricing information
- Service agreements that were incomplete or out-of-date
- Late financial reporting
- Weak governance and prudential management systems, and
- Poor documentation and record keeping.
These were higher-risk providers, so the results don’t describe the whole sector. But none of these failings is unusual. An outdated service agreement, or a pricing schedule nobody has checked since the program launched, could sit unnoticed in almost any organisation.
Cooperation is its own test
One allegation stands apart from the others. The investigated provider may have failed to give the Commission information it asked for. That matters because the Commission has made it clear how it decides when to escalate.
“Where providers engage with us and address issues, we will work with them as they improve their compliance. Where we identify serious concerns or a failure to cooperate, we will not hesitate to take stronger action,” the Commissioner said.
Eighteen providers resolved their issues through engagement. The message for boards is that the response to a regulator’s request can shape the outcome as much as the original problem.
What good practice looked like
The review also found providers doing this well. They had strong governance and oversight, effective monitoring and reporting, mature financial and prudential management, and decisions built around the needs of older people.
At your next board meeting, it may be pertinent to pose the following questions:
- When did we last check our published prices against what we actually charge?
- Is care management clearly separated from service delivery in our pricing?
- What is our process for agreeing a price change with a client before it takes effect?
- Are all current service agreements signed and up to date?
- Have we lodged every financial report on time this year?
- If the Commission asked for documents tomorrow, how quickly could we produce them?
What happens next
The Commission says the findings will shape its future education, monitoring and regulatory work, and it will keep watching Support at Home providers. Older people or families concerned about a provider’s pricing or practices can contact the Commission directly.
The full review findings are available on the Commission’s website.
