Cindy Feng has worked across the Aged Care Policy, Hospital Policy and Classification sections at the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority, with a focus on funding reform, safety and quality, and innovative models of care.
In the aged care space, she has overseen the public consultation and policy processes to inform the development of aged care pricing frameworks and pricing advice to the Australian Government.
On the health side, she has led the development of the national efficient price and national efficient cost determinations for the public hospital sector, including consideration of policy and pricing implications arising from the COVID 19 pandemic response.
Cindy also has significant clinical experience as a General Dentist in the public sector across aged care, special needs and correctional facilities.
Developing residential and support at home aged care pricing advice
Precis
Under the National Health Reform Act 2011, the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority (IHACPA) is charged with providing independent and evidence-based pricing and costing advice to the Australian Government across the health care and aged care sectors. This presentation focuses on IHACPA’s role in developing pricing advice for residential aged care, residential respite care and in-home aged care.
IHACPA is committed to a consultative, transparent and evidence-based approach in the development of its pricing advice. Annual cost collections and public consultation is central to IHACPA’s work program. Cost collections enable IHACPA to have a better understanding of the resources and costs associated with delivering aged care services and consultation feedback informs the development of IHACPA’s pricing framework, which sets out its approach, methodology and principles underpinning its pricing advice.
This presentation will outline the policy context within which IHACPA is operating, including IHACPA’s cost collections and the methodology behind developing pricing advice to government, with a particular focus on IHACPA’s data-driven approach, indexation methodology, and the adjustments IHACPA includes to prospectively account for known cost increases to the sector in the short term.
This year, IHACPA has expanded the scope of the Residential Aged Care Cost Collection 2024–25 and undertaken the Support at Home Live Data Collection 2025 to inform its pricing advice to government for 2026–27. IHACPA also released the Consultation Paper on the Pricing Framework for Australian Support at Home Aged Care Services 2026–27 and the Consultation Paper on the Pricing Framework for Australian Residential Aged Care Services 2026–27 in June and July 2025 respectively.
Data and information gathered through IHACPA’s cost collections and public consultations informs the development of pricing and costing advice, from data preparation to building the pricing model and applying indexation.
While IHACPA’s remit in aged care pertains to the provision of expert pricing and costing advice to government and does not extend to price or policy setting, IHACPA’s advice to government facilitates equity in pricing and promotion of safe high quality care that better recognises resident and participant complexity and variations in the costs of delivering care.