The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is implementing significant pricing changes effective 1 July 2025, with major implications for Allied Health providers. Allied Health business owners and leaders need to understand how these adjustments will influence their financial viability, day-to-day operations, workforce stability, and the delivery of care to participants. 

This article provides an in-depth analysis of the upcoming price changes and their expected impacts on allied health businesses. We draw on official data from the NDIS and insights from peak bodies like Allied Health Professions Australia (AHPA) and professional associations to help practices navigate the road ahead.

One of the most immediate impacts of the July 2025 update is on the price limits for allied health services. The NDIS has lowered or frozen therapy rates in an effort to “realign” costs with broader healthcare benchmarks. 

Table 1 summarises the key pricing adjustments for relevant professions:

*Speech Pathology, Occupational Therapy and other therapy prices have remained frozen at $193.99 since 2019.

The price decreases are particularly notable for physiotherapy and dietetic services. The NDIS will cut physiotherapy fees by $10 per hour, establishing a new national cap of $183.99/hour. For dietitians, the hourly cap will drop by $5 to $188.99. Other therapy disciplines like occupational therapy and speech pathology receive no increase at all – their rate remains at $193.99, marking the seventh consecutive year of a price freeze. In effect, after years without indexation, a continued freeze or reduction amounts to a real-term cut once inflation and rising costs are considered.

These pricing changes create significant financial pressures for Allied Health businesses. Many practices were already operating on tight margins due to the long-standing price cap stagnation. For example, Occupational Therapy Australia reports that 60% of OT practices were expecting to break even or run at a loss in 2023–24, even before the new freeze was confirmed. With the 2025–26 rates unchanged for occupational therapy and speech pathology and now lower for physios and dietitians, profitability will be further squeezed. 

Providers must contend with rising expenses – including staff wages, rent, insurance, and administrative costs – without commensurate increases in revenue per service. Indeed, the Fair Work Commission recently approved a 3.5% increase in award wages for 2025 and there are more increases under consideration. Any disability support worker services under NDIS will receive a 3.95% price indexation to cover wage growth whilst in contrast, Allied Health therapy businesses are seeing price limits flatlined or cut, creating a widening gap between escalating operating costs and capped incomes.

The Australian Physiotherapy Association (APA) has expressed that it is “appalled” by this decision, noting it “ignores years of price freezes and ongoing pressures of rising operational costs.” 
The APA warns that many physio providers simply cannot absorb further revenue reductions, and that the new price limit “will make working within the scheme untenable for many physiotherapists”, ultimately forcing them out and leaving NDIS participants without care.

It’s important to note that the NDIS also removed state-based price loadings as part of this reform. Previously, some states and territories (e.g. Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, Northern Territory) had higher therapy price caps than others. 

From July 2025 all states and territories share the same national price limits. While this simplifies the schedule, it means providers in those previously higher-priced states face an even steeper effective cut. For instance, aligning WA’s physiotherapy rate to the national $183.99 results in a combined reduction of about $40 per hour for WA physios compared to their former cap. Such a drastic income drop in certain regions will likely erode profitability entirely for some clinics operating in higher-cost or rural areas.

From a financial planning perspective, Allied Health business owners should brace for tighter margins and potential profitability challenges in 2025–26 and beyond in the NDIS. Many may need to re-forecast budgets, reduce expenses, or attempt to diversify income to remain viable. Businesses should focus on actions that they can take in the short term, noting that actions such as diversifying income can take years to achieve.

It is beyond the scope of this article to debate the methodology of the pricing recommendations however Allied Health peak bodies and advocates have raised serious questions. The NDIA’s rationale for the cuts is to curb what it viewed as “NDIS premiums” – therapy prices significantly above mainstream market rates – and ensure participant funds go further. In theory, if participant plan budgets remain the same, a lower price cap could allow participants to purchase slightly more therapy hours for their budget. However, this potential benefit is only realised if providers can afford to continue offering services at the new rates. In practice, any financial relief to participants may be offset by providers exiting or cutting services, as described below. The bottom line is that allied health businesses will need to reconcile rising costs with stagnant or reduced revenue per session – a scenario that puts significant pressure on profit margins and business sustainability.
 

Beyond the raw dollars, the new pricing arrangements will force operational changes in how allied health services are delivered and managed. Business owners may need to adjust service models, scheduling, and administrative processes in response to the NDIS updates:

Session Structure and Service Models: With constrained revenue per hour, practices might reconsider the length and format of therapy sessions. Some may shorten or even lengthen standard appointment durations, increase the use of group therapy sessions and consider what non face to face activity they are able to bill for but have not been to date.

Scheduling and Travel: The major operational change is the NDIS cut to travel compensation for therapists. Effective 1 July, provider travel claims for therapy support workers will be capped at 50% of the hourly rate. In other words, clinicians can only bill half of their normal rate for time spent traveling (and existing distance/time caps on travel still apply). 

Allied Health Professions Australia warns that “cutting travel by 50% will particularly threaten the sustainability of home-based and rural services.” Therapists who previously could recoup a full hour’s pay for an hour on the road will now recover at most 30 minutes' worth of their previous travel income, making long drives financially unviable. 

As a result, many businesses will tighten their service radius or reduce home visits, particularly in sparsely populated areas. Occupational Therapy Australia notes that many providers will simply shrink the geographical areas they serve under these rules, meaning participants in outer-regional and remote locations could lose access to in-home appointments.

To mitigate losses, practices will need to optimise scheduling where possible (if they have not already) – for example, clustering multiple participants on the same trip or prioritising clinic-based appointments where possible. 

Some may invest more in Telehealth services (for participants able to engage remotely) to reduce travel time. However, Telehealth is not feasible for all types of therapy or participant needs, so strategic scheduling and routing will become a critical operational task.

Administrative Burden: Implementing the new pricing will itself entail administrative work for providers. Providers will need to communicate with participants and plan managers about any changes to session fees or service arrangements. Given the short lead time – the final pricing decisions were confirmed only in mid-June for a 1 July start – many businesses are scrambling to make these updates with minimal disruption. There will also be staff training required: practitioners and billing teams must understand the new rules. Ensuring accurate billing under the updated rules may require more meticulous travel tracking and checks, adding to administrative load.

In summary, Allied Health businesses will need to streamline operations and possibly redesign aspects of service delivery to remain sustainable under the new pricing regime. Strategies like limiting travel and maximising billable time will move from good practice to essential survival tactics. Operational agility and efficiency will be key for practices to weather the coming changes.

The pricing changes are poised to have a profound effect on the allied health workforce – both for business owners managing teams and for the therapists delivering care. Several aspects of workforce management and sustainability are at stake:

Staff retention and turnover: Reduced or frozen funding rates mean providers may struggle to offer competitive salaries or even maintain current wage levels. With inflation and the Fair Work Commission’s wage hike of 3.5% this year (and more increases pending), allied health staff reasonably expect pay rises – yet the NDIS pricing changes give practices no additional revenue to fund those raises. Alarmingly, surveys indicate many practitioners and businesses are already considering leaving the NDIS space due to financial stress. 

Prior to these changes, almost one-third (31%) of APA member physiotherapists had considered exiting the NDIS sector because of untenable pricing and cost pressures. The APA bluntly states that the 2025–26 cut will “increase these departures”. The trend is similar across professions: Occupational Therapy Australia notes 8% of OTs left the NDIS provider market in the past year alone, impacting over 7,000 participants. Dietitians Australia, likewise, reports that more than 25% of dietitians providing NDIS services plan to reduce or cease NDIS work if pricing doesn’t reflect real costs.

This brewing workforce exodus could leave the NDIS sector severely understaffed. Losing experienced clinicians undermines a practice’s service capacity and incurs costs of recruitment and training new hires. For business owners, retaining talent will be a major challenge, likely requiring creative non-monetary incentives such as flexible work arrangements.

Wage and recruitment challenges: If many providers indeed face the prospect of paying staff more than the NDIS will reimburse, some may opt to hire fewer experienced staff and instead focus on hiring lower-cost junior clinicians. New graduates, for example, command lower salaries, but they also require more supervision and may not handle complex cases as efficiently – potentially affecting service quality and increasing supervisory burden on senior staff. Practices might also rely more on contractors or casual staff to avoid commitments, but this can reduce workforce stability and continuity of care and practices need to be very careful with respect to sham contracting.

The net effect is a likely shortage of skilled therapists willing to work under NDIS conditions, which in turn increases workloads on remaining staff (risking burnout) and forces business owners to spend more effort on recruitment and training. OTA has warned that continued price suppression “will further destabilise an already strained workforce, with more OTs walking away amid rising costs, burnout and unsustainable pricing.”
 

Morale and professional motivation: The narrative around these changes has been disheartening for many clinicians. Hearing that their services are being priced lower because they are deemed too costly by the scheme can be demoralising. Allied health professionals take pride in providing high-quality, person-centered care; feeling that their expertise is undervalued (or seen as a “cost to cut”) is deeply concerning.

APA President Dr. Rik Dawson emphasised that “physiotherapy isn’t a simple ‘cost to cut.’ It’s an investment in preventing functional decline...keeping people out of hospital and reducing need for high-cost care in the longer term.” When practitioners perceive that message is lost on policymakers, it can erode morale. Consequently, business owners might find staff increasingly frustrated or disillusioned, which can affect workplace culture and performance. Open communication, involving staff in problem-solving, and highlighting the positive impact of their work on participants (despite the pricing challenges) will be important to maintain morale.

In summary, the workforce impacts of the NDIS pricing overhaul are likely to be negative in the short term – with higher turnover, trouble recruiting and retaining staff, and potential reductions in the available skill mix. This comes at a time when demand for allied health in disability is growing, which is a worrying mismatch. Allied health businesses will have to be proactive in supporting their teams, advocating for fairer pricing (many are joining collective advocacy through their professional associations), and finding innovative ways to deliver services with a constrained workforce. Otherwise, a “workforce crisis” could emerge, as the APA and others caution, severely impacting both providers and participants who rely on their expertise

Ultimately, the purpose of Allied Health services is to support participant outcomes – and any changes that affect providers will inevitably ripple through to people with disability receiving care. Allied health business owners must consider how the NDIS pricing adjustments might influence the quality, accessibility, and outcomes of services delivered under the scheme:
 

• Participant access to services: Perhaps the most pressing concern is that participants may find it harder to access allied health services under the new pricing. If providers scale back or withdraw (as evidenced by the workforce trends above), participants could face longer waitlists or even a lack of local service options. Occupational Therapy Australia notes that thousands of participants are already facing longer waits and reduced access after providers left following last year’s freeze – a situation poised to worsen with another year of stagnant rates.

  Rural and remote communities are at particular risk. Travel disincentives mean fewer clinicians willing to come to a participant’s home in far-flung areas, exacerbating the existing “postcode lottery” in NDIS service availability. Dietitians Australia explicitly warns that cuts will hit regional and remote participants the hardest. In practical terms, some participants might have to travel long distances to clinics (if they are physically able), or rely on telehealth if available, or else go without certain therapies if no provider can cover their area.

  This undermines the NDIS principle of choice and control, as participant choice is meaningless without available providers. AHPA’s CEO Bronwyn Morris-Donovan has raised the alarm that reduced travel and frozen prices threaten the accessibility of high-quality services, and has called for a pause on these cuts in the interest of participants’ needs.

• Quantity of therapy vs. quality of outcomes: There is an argument by NDIA that lowering prices could allow participants to get “more therapy hours for their dollars.” In theory, if a plan’s funding is unchanged and physio now costs ~$10 less per hour, a participant could potentially schedule additional sessions within their budget.

  However, more hours do not automatically translate to better outcomes – especially if those hours are delivered under constrained conditions. Providers might shorten sessions or reduce one-on-one time to make ends meet. Moreover, if experienced clinicians leave and are replaced by less experienced ones (or not replaced at all), the efficacy of each therapy hour could diminish.

  Quality of care may suffer if therapists are pressured to see more participants in less time. As Speech Pathology Australia has pointed out in its advocacy, the NDIA’s ongoing price freeze fails to account for the complex, time-intensive nature of therapy for people with disability, which often involves longer sessions, multidisciplinary coordination, and tailored interventions not comparable to a quick standard appointment.

  Benchmarking NDIS therapy prices against short, episodic services (like a brief consultation covered by Medicare) “underestimates the time, expertise and clinical responsibility” required in disability care. Therefore, even if nominal service hours increase, the effectiveness of therapy could decline if sessions are rushed or key elements (like caregiver training, report writing, collaboration with other supports) are curtailed because they aren’t adequately funded. Business owners will need to safeguard service quality by possibly investing non-billable time in these activities or clearly prioritising goals – a difficult ask when margins are thin, but critical to prevent participant outcomes from deteriorating.

• Impact on participant outcomes and health: Over the longer term, reduced access and potential declines in service quality pose risks to participant health and independence. Allied health interventions are often preventative and capacity-building. If participants receive less therapy or delay getting support, they may experience functional decline, poorer health, and increased complications. For instance, dietitians warn that limited access to nutrition support can lead to malnutrition, dehydration, swallowing difficulties (dysphagia) and ultimately preventable hospital admissions for people with disability. Physiotherapists similarly note that cutting their services is shortsighted: “Keeping people mobile keeps them out of hospital…reduces the need for high-cost care in the longer term.” 

  In other words, under-resourcing allied health now may shift costs to acute and emergency healthcare later. This not only harms individuals (who might lose independence or suffer health crises) but also contradicts the NDIS’s aim of investing in supports that improve participants’ long-term outcomes and reduce downstream costs. Business owners who are also clinicians keenly feel this concern – many fear that if they can no longer afford to provide intensive, personalised therapy, participants’ progress could stall or regress. There could be less capacity for early intervention or preventative programs, meaning issues like deteriorating mobility, communication, or nutrition are addressed only once they reach a serious stage.

• Maintaining service scope: Some Allied Health practices may respond to the financial crunch by narrowing the scope of services they offer. For example, a clinic might stop offering certain assessments or report-writing intensive services (like complex functional capacity evaluations or comprehensive assistive technology assessments) because the fixed price or time required isn’t covered by the capped rate.

  Others might reduce multidisciplinary collaborations (like joint visits or case conferences between OT, physio, speech, etc.) since each provider can only bill for their portion and half-rate travel, making such collaborations harder to justify financially. While understandable from a business standpoint, this fragmentation can affect holistic care. Participants with complex needs often benefit most from coordinated, team-based approaches – exactly the kind of approach that is strained by tight pricing. 

  Business owners will have to decide whether to continue certain best-practice approaches at a potential financial loss or to streamline services to what is financially feasible under NDIS rules.

• Participant experience: On a human level, participants and their families may feel the impact through changes in their therapy routines. They might see new faces if staff turnover increases, have sessions canceled or rescheduled more often due to provider capacity issues, or be offered shorter or less frequent appointments if providers are trying to accommodate more people with limited resources.

  Some families could face increased out-of-pocket costs if they decide to supplement NDIS-funded therapy with private services to maintain continuity (not an option available to all, especially given the vulnerability of many NDIS participants). All these changes can cause stress and uncertainty for people who rely on consistent relationships and therapy progress to achieve their goals.

It is worth noting that NDIA officials believe the market will adjust without harming participants – the agency has stated it “believes the markets are strong enough that participants will still have access to the supports they need” despite these price changes. They have pledged to monitor the situation and encourage providers with sustainability concerns to contact them. From the provider and participant perspective, however, this optimism is met with skepticism. Peak bodies like AHPA and others are actively advocating for urgent revisions, arguing that “freezing prices for another year does not just threaten provider viability. It directly undermines participant outcomes… it is not just unfair, it is dangerous.”

In summary, service delivery under the NDIS could become leaner and more fragmented as a result of the 2025–26 pricing changes, unless mitigated. Participants may have fewer choices and face more hurdles in obtaining therapy, even if their funding nominally goes a bit further in hours. Allied health businesses will strive to uphold quality and access, but their capacity to do so is intrinsically tied to financial and workforce stability. The true impact on participant outcomes will need close watching in the coming months; any signs of widespread participant harm would validate the sector’s concerns and possibly prompt policy re-evaluation.

The July 2025 NDIS pricing changes present a mixed picture for Allied Health businesses. On one hand, the reforms aim to create a more “equitable and sustainable” scheme by aligning therapy prices with broader healthcare markets and standardising rates nationally (noting significant concerns about the methodology behind this viewpoint by the sector).On the other hand, the immediate reality for physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech pathology, and dietetic providers is one of heightened financial strain and uncertainty. Business owners will likely face tough decisions in the coming year: how to balance budgets with fair staff wages, whether to continue serving certain areas or participant groups at a loss, and how to maintain quality care under tighter constraints.

Industry groups are not standing idle – Allied Health Professions Australia (AHPA) has urgently requested high-level meetings with the government, citing deep concern for the sector’s sustainability and participants’ access to care. Professional associations (APA, OTA, SPA, DA and others) are collectively advocating to revisit these pricing decisions, highlighting the risk of a workforce and service delivery crisis if nothing changes.

In the interim, Allied Health business owners should approach this new landscape with a proactive strategy. Key steps include: re-evaluating business models for efficiency, communicating transparently with staff and participants about changes, exploring collaborative partnerships (for instance, sharing resources or referrals with other providers to cover service gaps), and keeping meticulous financial oversight to detect early signs of distress. It’s also prudent to document any adverse impacts (e.g. participants forced onto waitlists or staff departures due to low rates) – such evidence can inform both internal adjustments and external advocacy.

Most importantly, the core mission remains unchanged: delivering quality, person-centered care to people with disabilities. Despite the financial and operational hurdles, allied health professionals are dedicated to their participants’ outcomes. As one industry voice aptly put it, “There is no NDIS without Allied Health” – the value that physiotherapists, OTs, speech pathologists, dietitians and their colleagues provide is fundamental to participant success. Ensuring that value is recognised in pricing is an ongoing battle. In the meantime, navigating the current changes with resilience and innovation will be crucial for allied health businesses to continue making a positive difference in the lives of those they support.

In a pricing environment where every minute counts and margins are tight, efficiency is no longer optional for Allied Health providers – it’s essential. That’s where splose, our purpose-built Allied Health practice management software, comes in. Designed with the complexities of the NDIS in mind, splose helps practices streamline operations, improve billing accuracy, and avoid financial risk, all while freeing up valuable clinical and admin time.

Here’s how splose is helping Allied Health businesses stay sustainable and compliant in the evolving NDIS landscape:

• Smart travel & transport billing: With splose, businesses can easily claim for labour-related travel, non-labour travel, and activity-based transport – with the option to pre-set default times, distances, or quantities that auto-load when appointments are booked. This not only saves admin time but also ensures consistency and compliance with the latest NDIS pricing rules.
• Automated NDIS bulk uploads (myplace & PACE): splose supports bulk uploading of claims to both the traditional myplace portal and the new PACE system, drastically reducing the time and human error involved in submitting claims manually.
• Plan allocation tracking: Avoid overspending participant funding with splose’s case allocation tracking. The system automatically monitors the funds allocated to each case against what’s been booked or billed, helping prevent overallocation and potential bad debt.
• Time-saving batch invoicing: splose enables batch invoicing across multiple clients, services, and time periods, a feature that can save the equivalent of one or more full-time accounts roles in allied health businesses. It’s a major win for scaling operations without scaling overheads.
• Open API for integrations & automation: splose’s robust API enables seamless integration with accounting tools, analytics platforms, CRMs, and workflow automation software. This opens up powerful opportunities to streamline processes and gain real-time insights into business performance.
• Practitioner performance dashboard: Monitor and manage therapist efficiency with ease using the Practitioner Performance Report, which provides real-time insights into billable vs. non-billable time, cancellations, utilisation rates, and more.

Whether you’re navigating price caps, managing large mobile teams, or responding to increased demand, splose is built to support sustainable, scalable allied health service delivery under the NDIS. Start a 14-day free trial or reach out for a demo.