Health and Disability Minister Mark Butler says a person’s diagnosis will play almost no part in determining whether they qualify for access to the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Source: SMH.
Mr Butler said the new eligibility assessment – which is yet to be designed, but will determine access to the NDIS from January 2028 – will be “relatively blind” to whether people had clinical diagnoses for particular conditions, so that families would no longer seek out medical diagnoses to get support.
“[It will] be relatively blind to whether you bring a diagnosis of autism or down syndrome or a more physical quadriplegia or paraplegia, for example, and instead look at how your daily living needs are assessed.”
Mr Butler said the new tool would be designed over the next 18 months with the disability community and state governments.
One of their tasks will be to determine whether the new assessment should include a “light touch” first stage to identify people with unambiguous functional impairments who will remain on the scheme for the rest of their lives.
Mr Butler has been seeking to explain Labor’s overhaul of the $50 billion NDIS since announcing last Wednesday that he wanted to restore the scheme to its original purpose and recoup $35 billion over the forward estimates, turning it into one of the largest budget cuts in recent history.
Mr Butler said another consequence of Labor’s changes would be a redistribution of the allied health workforce, which had become skewed towards serving the NDIS over the last decade.
He said it had become difficult for Australians in aged care, veterans’ care or hospitals to see occupational therapists, speech therapists, psychologists and physiotherapists.
“There’s been this very big gravitational pull in this market, that pays relatively well for all of those health professionals to shift to the NDIS scheme,” Mr Butler said.
The hourly price limit for most allied health professionals under the NDIS is $194, while they may receive a rebate of just $62 for services through Medicare.
But as thousands more children have joined the scheme than anticipated, it has also meant more professionals are choosing work in the NDIS, exacerbating wait lists and worker shortages outside the scheme.
FULL STORY
New NDIS eligibility tool will be ‘relatively blind’ to diagnoses: Butler (By Natassia Chrysanthos and Paul Sakkal, SMH)
