Archive: NDIS Price Guide Update - July 2016
July 2016 Price Guide Update
The NDIA released its initial CSV version of the new price guide on July 6th, 2016 price guide. Originally we expected it to have incorporated these changes into SupportAbility before June 27th.
UPDATE June 20, 2016: Today the NDIA have removed all variations of the new July 1st Price Guide from their website whilst they 'correct Item Codes' issues. At this stage, the NDIA have provided no indication as to when they expect the revised price guide to be released.
UPDATE June 24, 2016: Today the NDIA released the revised version of their July 1st Price Guide in an effort to correct item coding issues. We are still waiting on the agency to release the CSV versions of the new price guide so that we can begin work integrating the new price guide into SupportAbility. Please be assured that as soon as the NDIA release a finalised CSV version of the new price guide, we will be making it our highest priority to integrate the new price guide into SupportAbility.
UPDATE June 29, 2016: Today the NDIA released the CSV version of the second release of the July 1st price guide in an effort to correct item coding issues. The support categories that individual supports are attached to has changed in the latest price guide release. This raises serious concerns as to how clients with support plans containing the old categories can use supports with the new categories. We are still awaiting clarification on answers to these questions, before we can finalise a solution within SupportAbility.
UPDATE July 1, 2016: Today the NDIA released the new version of the provider portal. The new provider portal has a major hours formatting bug which is preventing providers being able to process claims via bulk upload. We are still awaiting conformation on the agency as to when they will have this issue resolved.
UPDATE July 4, 2016: Still no news at this stage from the NDIA on their ETA for fixing the outstanding portal hours bug or clarification on the new category mapping issues. We will continue to update this document as things progress.
UPDATE July 6, 2016:
- NDIA Provider Portal Import Bug: The NDIA have told some of our providers that they will be rolling out a fix for the provider portal to allow manual claims to be processed. The NDIA have still not provided any indication on when they expect the bulk upload facility problems to be resolved.
- Price Guide Update: Our SupportAbility upgrade that includes the new July 1st price guide is in final testing and will be rolling out the upgrade to all SupportAbility clients this weekend. Please note that you will need to delete and re-create and Invoice Batches and NDIS Portal Batches that cover activities from July 1st onwards once the upgrade is applied.
UPDATE July 7, 2016: There are currently two major claiming issues due to bugs in the new NDIS provider portal (MyPlace):
- Manual Claim Processing: This currently works but only very intermittently. Some reports seem to claim that it seems to work when the quantity entered is a whole number (not a decimal)
- Bulk Claim File Processing: This currently results in a hours formatting bug. No bulk claims are able to be processed at this time.
We have heard NDIA are releasing an upgrade to the provider portal tonight overnight. We have heard that this upgrade is designed to fix the manual claiming issue, but we haven’t heard anything to say that it will fix the bulk claim issue. We can only hope that both issues are resolved given the impact that they are having on providers across the country. I am in constant communication with our providers affected by these NDIS portal bugs and will continue to provide updates on any news.
UPDATE July 22, 2016: The NDIA currently still have the following bugs with the NDIS provider portal (MyPlace):
- The quantity field (used for non-hour-based supports such as kilometres) only accepts whole numbers, not decimals. The agency have released a spreadsheet that can be used as a work around which can be used to calculate the adjusted rate to account for the rounding up of the quantity field.
- The ability to use category '0004: Assistance with Social & Community Participation' supports for clients with only category '001: Assistance with Daily Life' on their plan is currently not working. The agency have released a spreadsheet for working around the issue which contains temporary replacement reference numbers for the category 0004 supports to use when claiming through the portal.
We have received further clarification on the bulk import file specification from the agency this week and we will be releasing an upgrade over the weekend to comply with their specified requirements. That said, as listed above, there are still bugs in the provider portal that the agency need to rectify. SupportAbility will not be applying workarounds for these bugs in the portal. It is the responsibility of the NDIA and DHS (the developer) to fix the issues.
UPDATE August 9th, 2016: We have been informed by our providers operating under NDIS that:
- The MyPlace portal is now accepting bulk upload files (including those generated by SupportAbility)
- The reconciliation of payment requests to actual payments is very difficult because the NDIA are still performing various rounding operations on the quantity and rates of some supports
- The NDIA are also making individual bank transfer payments against each line on a bulk payments request file, rather than the total value of the payment request, making the reconciliation of payments even more difficult