Why NDIS Cuts Might Be the Best Thing to Happen to Your Business
I can almost guarantee that if you’re a disability provider in Australia right now, you’re chewing your nails or pulling out your hair. The NDIS that we’ve all come to love/hate is about to be…..reorganised (and that’s me just trying to put it nicely). Some participants are literally waking up one morning to find that their plans have been randomly reduced or that their new plan definitely does not meet their needs.
As providers, the NDIS brought us a unique business advantage that most other industries just don’t have. We’ve not really had to work to find clients, in fact most of us have simply needed to exist. The second you say you’ve got availability, you either start calling your wait list or post in a FB group and BAM, caseload full, invoices paid. When the demand is higher than what can physically be supplied and clients don’t personally pay the bill, from the outside, it seems like the business deal of a lifetime. In many ways, it has been. Some providers have only been able to exist because of the NDIS, and we’re all very grateful for the millions of Australians who have been able to benefit. The NDIS has enabled so many allied health clinicians (myself included) to offer consistent care, dive deeper into the needs of my families, and actually provide high-quality, ongoing therapy. Medicare, for example, isn’t equipped for that.
At the core of all of these changes are the participants, and I don’t think any of us are denying that. We care about our clients, we wouldn’t have chosen this career if we didn’t. We know how quickly lives will fall apart once the changes fully take effect, but caring about our participants and wanting more for them doesn’t mean we also can’t care about our own livelihoods.
Right now, it’s easy to get lost in the panic, and I’m the first to say that I’ve been stressed. But I’m also trying to remember that sometimes, for things to breakthrough, they first have to break down.
There are drawbacks to building a business that relies on government funding.
Firstly, it’s too easy to become…complacent. Businesses outside this sector have had to actively learn how to keep building profit. They’ve had to pivot, pay for advice, get creative, make and learn from 1000 mistakes, and constantly work on future- proofing things as much as possible because they know there are never any guarantees. The COVID lockdowns are a perfect example of how some businesses could survive (and even thrive) while others had the rug yanked from beneath them.
But many of us over here in ‘essential services’ land have been cradled by the government for a long time. When all (or most) of our eggs are nestled warmly in the government’s basket, our businesses are running a huge risk. Eggs are fragile and easy to break. When we don’t have to think about finding or retaining clients, there’s not much motivation to innovate within our business models. Business, by its very nature, needs constant and increasing momentum and most of the time that happens when the owners are innovative. If there’s never been a need, we’ve never learned the skills, and now we’re suddenly being expected to do a lot more with a lot less.
Then there’s the compliance fatigue.
When the government calls the shots, it really calls the shots. Billions of dollars aren’t just handed over on good faith, so there’s compliance regulation upon regulation upon regulation. We all knew paperwork was part of the job, but NDIS has increased that ten-fold (yet there are still only 24 hours in a day). To truly help our clients (and, by default, ourselves), we have to know how to work the system. What language to use, which phrases to avoid, which form to fill out, what we’re allowed and not allowed to do in practice… the list goes on.
So often we can see a better way forward for our clients, but because the government are running the show, they won’t pay us for thinking outside the box. 1:1 appointments in a room somewhere are treated as the one-and-only solution when in reality, there are so many others that could be explored. While I’m not disputing that they have their place, Medicare and the NDIS squash any chance of innovation. I, for example, have built a custom ChatGPT. It’s been trained by me, and it allows parents to ask questions and receive help and resources the instant they need it. I can’t afford to give this away for free, but the NDIS won’t pay for families to have access.
If we’re not constrained by the government, we can innovate, scale, incorporate things like AI, do things differently, model from other industries, and deliver healthcare in more accessible ways.
Realistically, some businesses won’t survive the NDIS changes, but yours doesn’t have to be one of them. If you can differentiate yourself by increasing and diversifying your skills, you’ll be much more likely to look back at this time and actually be grateful for the push. With more skills and less government constraints, you’ll:
Be better equipped to retain clients
Receive more referrals
Increase your perceived value
Be less easily replaced
Strengthen your industry reputation
Innovate and make healthcare more accessible
Improve your confidence and
Achieve better clinical outcomes overall.
The goal here isn’t to abandon NDIS clients and completely change direction. It’s about building a diverse business that’s strong enough to withstand whatever government changes are to come.
