Who should attend: Costing practitioners across jurisdictions and health care professionals, activity based funding, costing and finance and mental health care professionals, and service managers from public hospitals and health departments.

Hear from IHACPA and representatives from QLD and SA as they share insights on mental health data collection, classification, costing and pricing. This includes data insights from recent NHCDC submissions and variation in reporting across jurisdictions. Representatives from QLD and SA will also present their journeys of costing mental health services.

Participants will have the opportunity to share their experiences, expectations and challenges when costing admitted and community mental health activity. The workshop will provide opportunity for Q&A with the audience and conclude with identifying the next steps for improving reporting and costing admitted and community mental health services.

Who should attend: Activity based funding, costing and finance, and mental health care professionals and service managers from public hospitals and health departments.

In 2016, IHACPA released a national casemix classification for mental health care, known as the Australian Mental Health Care Classification (AMHCC). The AMHCC is a clinically meaningful classification used for ABF purposes which aims to improve the prediction of cost and resource use for mental health care services. The AMHCC provides opportunity for innovation in funding of community mental health care services that is consumer-focused and recognises the complexity and resource usage of services. Since 2022-23 admitted mental health has been priced using the AMHCC in the national pricing model.

For the community setting, the AMHCC seeks to replace current block funding to generate greater transparency in the funding of these services and aligned to the principles of ABF. Additionally, IHACPA has undertaken a program of transition work in consultation with Australian states and territories to identify and mitigate risks associated with moving to ABF from block funding including analysis of activity and cost data and gap analysis between the two funding mechanisms.

This workshop will cover the background, objectives and relevant concepts for the implementation of ABF for community mental health care services. We will outline the important factors to be considered in supporting high quality data reporting and utilising ABF information for continuous improvement in service delivery and management. This includes the delivery of value-based, consumer-focused and coordinated care.

Who should attend: Aged care sector, business and finance teams, upper management and researchers interested in aged care costing, pricing or funding.

Since 2023, IHACPA has provided residential aged care pricing advice to the Australian Government. We also recently provided our first pricing advice on the Support at Home service list. This workshop will outline the policy context we are operating in and the process for developing our pricing advice to government. Key elements will include the consultation process, pricing framework, aged care cost collections and pricing methodology. Presenters will also discuss areas for future development.

Who should attend: Aged care sector, CEO, COO, CFO, Managers (General, Finance, Property Development, Sales, Customer Relations, Operations), Business Analysts.

IHACPA is responsible for the assessment and approval of Refundable Accommodation Deposit (RAD) applications submitted by residential aged care providers. From 1 January 2025, aged care providers must apply to IHACPA for RAD amounts above $750,000. From 1 November 2025, IHACPA’s assessment process will be guided by the Aged Care Rules 2025. In this workshop, registered aged care providers can hear more about these changes, and will be provided with information and guidance about the RAD application process.

This workshop will advise providers:

• how to submit an effective RAD application or business case
• how our assessment methodology works and what we are guided by in the legislation when considering a price
• how we work to provide information and support to providers about the application process and associated requirements.