News
Many service providers in the disability sector will receive further funding cuts to their professions as NDIS provider pricing levels are set to drop to a new low within the next two weeks.
As part of the cuts to NDIS provider funding, professionals will only be able to bill their travel time at 50% the hourly limit, according to the pricing breakdown provided by Team DSC.
he owner of a Hunter Valley based mobile dietetic practice, Nicole Donnelly, says she is frustrated by the changes as both a service provider and mother of a child living with autism.
Ms Donnelly, who has worked as a dietician for 17 years, believes participants who cannot attend clinics will be the ones missing out.
If I'm no longer able to travel…participants won't be able to see me. This means the most vulnerable participants, those with complex needs and limited support, will be hit the hardest.
Nicole Donnelly
For the service provider herself, the situation is just as dismal.
“The reality is for every hour that I get paid, I do at least two hours of unpaid work,” Ms Donnelly says.
Meanwhile, Ms Donnelly’s nine-year-old son Charlie, who accesses the support of physiotherapists, psychologists, occupational therapists among others while attending mainstream education, risks going back on his achievements.
“He's made significant progress since getting therapy. If the therapist can no longer travel to see him, I can't work full time and take him to appointments in clinics,” she says.
The Hunter dietician stresses that if her son loses access to his support, he'll relapse.
“He
might not be able to continue in a mainstream class in a mainstream school, get
a mainstream job, and have a mainstream life,” Ms Donnely says.
In the meantime, service providers are banding together to demand the NDIA
abolish the price reduction. Ms Donnelly claims the NDIA are basing their
therapy pricing comparisons on Medicare and private health insurance.
In the NDIS gap payments are not permitted, so the comparison is not valid or sustainable. Providers cannot legally charge above the cap, meaning many are now delivering services at a financial loss.
Nicole Donnelly
As for the Hunter service provider, she says she’s had enough of workers in the sector being used as scapegoats for funding cuts.
“People have been getting this messaging that we're all just driving our Lamborghinis and putting decks on our holiday houses.”
Despite these assumptions, Ms Donnelly argues that for the majority of providers, this isn’t the case.
“I'm not making a profit. I'm operating at a loss…. the public need to know this because they're told that we are making all this money and we're not.”
NDIS cuts to service providers are expected to come into effect 1st July.