A physiotherapist has blamed cuts to National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) workers’ payments for abandoning plans to establish a clinic at Kingston.
Meg Lowry has sought to open a physiotherapy clinic for locals with complex disabilities since 2021, investing her “life savings” to buy a block on Jeurs Street and spending more than $100,000 on plans and approvals alone.
Ms Lowry, who already runs a remote business out of Mount Gravatt East, said she chose Logan because it had a smaller density of allied-health services.
“In 2019, I got cancer and needed to stop working as a physio for a couple of years,” she said.
“At that time I decided that if I were to survive my cancer, I wanted to do something really meaningful with my life. Not that I wasn’t already, but I wanted to have a greater impact and leave a legacy.
“I thought the best thing I could do was open an exceptional, high-quality brain health and balance clinic in an area of great need. There’s such a postcode lottery for allied-health services, which tend to centralise around metropolitan and wealthier areas.”
Having previously worked with the state health service, Ms Lowry said she found it difficult to find “good service providers” for patients discharged from hospital in Logan.
“It was a punt as to whether I was going to live or die at the time, but I bought that property thinking that if I get to my five-year remission point, I’m then going to invest my life savings in trying to get a clinic off the ground here in Kingston to help people with strokes, MS, cerebral palsy – any disorders affecting their balance, mobility or cognition.”
Ms Lowry hit her remission milestone just over a year ago, and got to work hashing out the finer details of her plan – working with town planners, building designers, and a disability access consultant to get approval from Logan City Council, who she said “embraced” the idea.
However, she said these plans have come to a head after the National Disability Insurance Agency’s (NDIA) new price guide, which sets a cap on what providers can charge, has cut the hourly payments for NDIS physiotherapists by $10.
Previously, the NDIA’s cap for physiotherapists was about $193 an hour. As of 1 July, as part of a broader crackdown on NDIS providers “overcharging”, this has changed.
Ms Lowry said the reduced funding, which also cuts travel subsidies by 50%, renders her planned clinic unfeasible.
“There is also a rising cost of living, rising cost of business, and I wasn’t able to make the numbers stack up and the model really work. If something should go wrong, I’m going to have a huge amount of risk and debt.
“I’m not greedy with the profit margins that I’m seeking. I’m not an unscrupulous business owner trying to scam the NDIS – I’m a 40-year-old mum, I’m a foster carer, I’m a community-minded person.
“But if I can’t do it, then there’s nobody out there who’s going to make this and invest in bringing these services to Logan.”
An NDIA spokesperson said the cuts to payments were “modest” and fair.
“It’s important that NDIS participants are paying prices that are fair and in line with industry standards. In some cases, NDIS price limits exceeded the market rate by up to 68%,” they said.
“We heard from participants that excessive travel claims for therapy related services are draining participant’s plans faster than expected.”
However, Ms Lowry and the Australian Physiotherapy Association (APA) said the NDIA’s updated price guide was based on flawed and misleading data.
The APA claims it has “clear and credible” evidence that “challenges the assumptions underpinning the NDIA’s proposed pricing change”.
That evidence includes the “inappropriateness” of the NDIA using private health insurance and Medicare Benefits Schedule data as a benchmark for NDIS pricing, first-hand evidence from providers, and an independent study that showed a 13.3% shortfall between “actual therapy delivery costs and the current NDIS price guide”.
“This data is irrefutable – and paints a stark picture: if these pricing changes proceed, therapy services will become unsustainable, for metro and rural and regional areas alike, putting NDIS participants at serious risk of losing access to essential care,” the APA statement read.
“While the NDIA acknowledged the limitations of the methodology used to inform these decisions and indicated they are open to ongoing consultation over the next 12 months, they remain intent on implementing these changes from 1 July.”
