There have been some changes to the NDIS Price Guide and Support Catalogue 2019-20. These are effective 1 March 2020. The changes focus on giving participants more flexibility in accessing funding for transport services. This will impact the claims providers can make for participant transport.

These changes are positive for participants. However, there have already been comments they will make things more complex. We have written a summary to help you understand participant transport and the changes.

Updated participant transport information

The Price Guide contains updated information about participant transport. There are now two distinct categories for participant transport:

General Transport Supports

This is a new category. General Transport Supports include instances where a participant pays a provider to transport them to:

a) an activity that is not itself a support

b) a support delivered by another provider.

Providers registered for 'Assistance with Travel/Transport Arrangements' can make a claim against a participant’s transport budget for delivering General Transport Supports. Please note, this can only be used if participants have funding in their transport budget.

Activity Based Transport

There are now two types of Activity Based Transport in the Price Guide.

Community Participation Supports

Community Participation Supports was included in previous Price Guides. As a recap, providers of these supports may transport a participant:

a) to or from a community participation support

b) as a part of a community participation support.

The provider can bill for the time spent providing the transport support. The worker’s time can be claimed at the agreed hourly rate for the relevant support item. This should be the total time the worker provides support to one or more participants including the time spent accompanying and/or transporting the participant. The claim should be made using the relevant community participation support item and against the participant’s core budget.

Capacity Building Supports

Capacity Building Supports is new to the participant transport section in the Price Guide. Providers of certain types of capacity building supports can also claim for Activity Based Transport. These are:

Overall, there are now nine new line items in the Support Catalogue for Activity Based Transport

Reasonable levels providers can claim for non-labour transport costs (Activity Based Transport)

This is one of the most important changes for providers. The Price Guide now specifies the reasonable levels of costs providers can claim for non-labour transport costs. The NDIA considers the following would be reasonable:

• up to $0.85 a kilometre for a vehicle that is not modified for accessibility

• up to $2.40 a kilometre for a vehicle modified for accessibility (or a bus)

• other forms of transport or costs to the full amount (road tolls, parking, public transport fares).

These costs should be claimed against the relevant activity based transport support item in the community participation support category.

Please note these contributions are only suggestions made by the NDIA. Providers must come to an agreement with participants regarding how much they plan to charge.

With these changes, providers need to be aware of how to make claims for participant transport. Calculating things such as non-labour transport costs may prove to be complicated and difficult to implement. Overall however, these changes are positive for participants because they provide greater flexibility to use core funding for Activity Based Transport.

Are you looking to deliver transport supports or find out more about the updated transport pricing?

Join the thousands of providers on Centro FREE today to access our Support Categories and Price Guide look up tools. These can help you research the supports you could deliver and understand NDIS pricing

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