Another NDIS annual price update but when will notional rates settle?

If you’ve been asking yourself, “what is a notional unit price?” you’re not alone. You may also be trying to understand how it applies to the services you deliver to your clients using your current NDIS software.

With the release of the latest NDIS Pricing Arrangement and Price Limits 2021-2022, we updated our Lumary care management software with the new rates to ensure our customers maintain their compliance. While navigating the changes we noticed something new from the NDIA… the introduction of new notional unit prices!

A notional unit price of $1 has been set for some NDIS services that previously did not have price limits. While you can still negotiate the price of these services with your participants, the notional rate will change the way the claim is calculated. Instead of claiming the total dollar value of the service, the unit price of $1 will need to be multiplied by a quantity to calculate the overall cost.

The NDIA has provided the following as an example of a notional unit price. Activity-based transport items are not subject to price limits but have a ‘notional’ unit limit of $1. If the non-labour cost of activity-based transport was $21.50, the provider would submit a payment request for 21.5 units at $1 per unit for a total cost of $21.50.

Rest assured that for the time being, the NDIS will continue to accept the existing approach for claiming affected services. However, even though the timing for this has not been announced, it’s important to consider adopting the new approach so you’re not caught out when the transition period ends. We’ve popped some more information in the Lumary Help Centre about how our team is managing the upcoming changes for notional unit prices and how we support providers to maintain compliance with the NDIS.

With the evolving nature of the disability sector, we understand how service providers may be struggling to keep up with meeting compliance requirements using their current systems.

If your staff are feeling a little frustrated with manually updating these rates every year, it might be time to look at your systems. If you’re using multiple software systems that are not connected, such as spreadsheets, timesheets and paper-based record keeping, or your software isn’t keeping up with industry changes, it’s probably time for a change. Do a take 5 and consider:

• What are your daily organisational needs to operate efficiently?
• How can you maintain compliance and sustain this with the evolving nature of the healthcare sector?
• How can you best support your workforce and improve staff retention?
• How do you want to scale and grow your client base?
• How well are you delivering value-based care?

With the constant changes in the disability industry, it’s time to rethink how you deliver care. Over the past year, the government has driven digital transformation to better support the quality of care being delivered to some of the most vulnerable members of our community. The sector needs to improve transparency when claiming services especially with the mandates for data quality and advanced reporting. Therefore, to put it simply, the time for change is now.  

Reach out to the Lumary team and learn more about how we’re supporting over 200 Australian disability and aged care providers to meet compliance with the NDIA. With our team making timely and accurate updates to ensure our software remains compliant with the NDIA requirements and NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, you can reduce your administrative burden and spend more time on what’s important to you – delivering quality, value-based care.