Aged Care Viability Supplement for care providers

About

The Viability Supplement is paid monthly to eligible aged care providers in rural and remote areas. It helps with higher costs of delivering services in these areas.

From 1 January 2017, the Modified Monash Model (MMM) is used to determine the degree of remoteness. The more remote the location, the higher the MMM score.

This replaces the old Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA) and Rural, Remote and Metropolitan Areas (RRMA) schemes.

Find the current rates for the Viability Supplement on the Department of Health and Aged Care (Health and Aged Care) website.

Home Care Viability Supplement

If you're a Home Care Package provider, let us know your care recipients' location when they enter care or change location. You can do this through the Aged Care Provider Portal or claim form.

You then receive the Viability Supplement for care recipients in locations with the required MMM score.

Grandfathering arrangements apply if the supplement amount paid for a care recipient before 1 January 2017 was higher under the old ARIA scheme. That amount continues to be paid to make sure the care recipient and service aren't financially disadvantaged.

The supplement amount depends on the care recipient's MMM score.

Read more about Viability Supplement for Home Care on the Department of Health and Aged Care website.

Residential Care Viability Supplement

If you're a Residential Care provider, you may be eligible for the Viability Supplement. This depends on your location and number of allocated places.

In most cases, the supplement is paid if you have less than 45 places and a high MMM score.

Grandfathering of the old 1997, 2001 and 2005 schemes continue so no services are disadvantaged from the shift to MMM. If your service received a higher payment under previous schemes, you'll continue to get the higher amount until the amount payable under MMM exceeds that amount.

Read more about Viability Supplement in Residential Care on the Health and Aged Care website.

Expansion Component and the Homeless Supplement

In 2012 the Viability Supplement was expanded to provide further support to:

• aged care homes in very remote to moderately accessible locations where more than 50% of care recipients have lower care needs - eligible providers are automatically identified and their services get an extra 15 points
• eligible aged care homes providing specialist aged care services to Indigenous Australians, and
• eligible aged care homes providing specialist aged care services to people with a history, or at severe risk, of homelessness

Read more about applying for the Expansion Component and Homeless Supplement on the Health and Aged Care website.

If you're already registered, use the Viability Expansion Component and Homeless Supplement Assessment form (AC024) to tell us about new entrants who meet the criteria.

MMM system (as of 1 January 2017)

The MMM classification system measures the accessibility of all geographical locations in Australia.

MMM takes into account the size and isolation of a town based on the latest Census data, in comparison to ARIA which relies on road distances from service centres and doesn't include demographic factors of individual towns into its classification model.

MMM scores

The table below outlines the points allocated based on the MMM system.