NDIS pricing ‘a kick in the guts’, say disability advocates

New prices for NDIS supports will push some service providers to the brink, advocates warn.

Disability providers say services are under threat after the most recent NDIS pricing review.

Australians with disability have been “ripped off” by the latest ­review of National Disability ­Insurance Scheme pricing which will see legitimate service providers forced to leave the sector while criminals continue to plunder the $42bn scheme, ­advocates say.

The National Disability ­Insurance Agency published the annual pricing review on Friday, setting the maximum prices providers and health professionals are permitted to charge when providing services to the scheme’s 650,000 participants.

The NDIA noted the new pricing schedule, to take effect from July 1, included implementing the Fair Work Commission’s decision on higher wages in the sector and increasing price limits for psychologists and nurses.

But the agency conceded there were “minimal immediate changes”, pointing to the ­appointment in coming months of an independent expert to oversee a broader review of the NDIS pricing structure.

Providers said the latest pricing review had failed to recognise the increasing costs of operating, and the NDIA had been incompetent in managing the process.

National Disability Services chief executive Laurie Leigh said the pricing decisions would see high quality service providers forced to leave the NDIS, putting support for people with disability at risk, while criminals continue to take advantage of the scheme.

“The government is ripping off both people with disabilities and service providers by not addressing known and accepted pricing errors over recent years,” Ms Leigh said.

“At a time when the cost of operating is rising, government is effectively cutting funds to pay for disability services.”

The government is under ­intense pressure on rising NDIS costs, and has focused on ­addressing fraud and waste. It is trying to bring cost growth down from previous years, where it has hit as high as 20 per cent, to 8 per cent by 2026 to meet a target set by national cabinet.

NDIS Minister Bill Shorten has been critical of the Coalition and Greens for holding up new legislation he says would slow cost growth, including stopping the “automatic top up” of plans by participants who had used up their plan budget.

He said the NDIA had advised about two-thirds of these applications were not legitimate.

NDIS minister Bill Shorten. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

He said holding up the legislation for two months would cost the scheme about $1bn and threaten progress to the 8 per cent target.

Higher prices permitted through the pricing review would exacerbate cost pressures, but providers said they were concerned about the impact on the lives of NDIS participants.

They said the review had not included costs associated with inflation, insurance hikes, and admin and compliance costs. Several years of no increases for therapy and plan management had also hurt the capacity of providers to operate.

Disability Intermediaries Australia said the pricing review was a “kick in the guts” for those with disability and disability services across the country, warning the NDIA’s decision had plunged the sector into crisis.

“This decision is simply indefensible,” DIA chief executive Jess Harper said. “Keeping prices fixed for half a decade at pre-pandemic levels despite inflation, award wage increases and operating cost pressures is irresponsible and reckless.”

Dougie Herd, an NDIS Review panel member and executive director of Community Connections and My Choice My Support, said “if you want to kill a sector you could not go about in a more callous way”.

“Thanks for nothing. Literally nothing,” he said.

Future Focus Support Coordination chief executive Keeley Goldrick said the pricing decision was “sickening”.

“How’s this for a piss-poor justification for freezing the price on support co-ordination hourly rates again?” she said.

“It’s hard enough to recruit qualified staff for a profession sitting in uncertainty, and now we can’t even pay them a competitive salary to make them stick it out.”