11/06/2025
Nine years ago I left the public health system and embarked on creating my own private practice to continue to help people and be able to do it better. Being a provider for the NDIS became one way that I could do it better.
Today, among countless other Australian NDIS Allied Health providers, I end my day devastated.
After 6 years of freezes on all Allied Health rates amid skyrocketing business costs, the new financial year NDIS provider pricing has been released. In an unprecedented move dietitian, physio and podiatrist rates have been DECREASED, with provider travel funding halved. For the rest of Allied Health, rates remain frozen.
I say the following with intimate knowledge only of dietetics services but I have no doubt that podiatrists, physios, speech, and OT professionals could echo this with their own examples. I stand for all allied health.
In the immediate it’s yet another stab in the back for those of us who provide a specialty service for people so very much entitled to it.
We already have to shout it to the gods for NDIA to crack open the door and let us get a toe in so we can begin to do our work.
Then funding planners with - literally - no formal qualifications get to decide what funding a person with a complex disability deserves to have. Never mind need.
Despite the fact NDIS dietitians are all either honours or masters level university graduates - often with years or decades of experience - we are increasingly told by these unqualified ’planners’ that other AH can do the same job and that we are simply a duplication of service.
Or - more recently - they just exclude many of us from ‘stated supports’ despite overwhelming evidence that our funding recommendations meet all reasonable and necessary criteria.
For now the Nourish & Thrive team will continue to do it better. For how long, I don’t know.
The implications of our coming demotion - for this is what it is - layered on top of the repeated slaps to the face - for providers, participants and the public health system are huge.
What a sad day for people with disability and the providers who do the work they do because it is so needed. And because we love it.
It’s already been said - the only winners here are the federal Government.
Anger doesn’t even begin to cover it.
