NDIS’ inefficiencies are ‘costing us a fortune’: Julie Cross

At the moment the NDIS is harming some participants, not helping them, writes Julie Cross as she reflects on Rebecca Falkingham’s shock admission over costly medical reports.

NDIS participants and their families have long suspected the medical reports they’ve been asked to provide to planners who make decisions about their funding are not always being read.

They also complain that staff ignore what’s in these submissions, which take medical professionals hours to produce and which can cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars – with the taxpayer often picking up the tab.

On Thursday, the CEO of the National Disability Insurance Agency Rebecca Falkingham confirmed these concerns when she said at Senate Estimates: “To be really frank about it, my staff can’t read 280-page reports that they get … they can’t do that in that dedicated kind of way”.

And, when Liberal Senator Hollie Hughes, who has a child on the NDIS, told her that participants were frustrated that when they send in these reports “no-one reads them”, Ms Falkingham replied: “That’s right”.

Rebecca Falkingham, CEO of the National Disability Insurance Agency appears at the Community Affairs Estimates in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

It was a shocking admission and an insight into the inefficiencies within the scheme.

Ms Falkingham went on to say a lot of what is being written in these reports was not relevant under the NDIS act.

Now they tell us.

I’ve lost count of the number of people I have interviewed who have told me they have been asked to get yet another costly report.

Many of them have children with complex needs, hence those “280 pages”.

It is also an incredibly stressful process putting a person with disability through assessments over and over again.

Some participants are forced to pay for these reports out of their own pocket.

So the financial and the emotional toll is enormous, especially when the burden of proof is placed on people with disabilities and their families.

The complex reports take medical professionals hours to produce and can cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Picture: iStock

If what the NDIS staff are receiving is not relevant, why are people not better directed by the agency? Why is there not a template?

Ms Falkingham said she hoped a new streamlined support assessment tool due to be rolled out in September, will free up “all those allied health staff to be delivering services, not to be producing reports”.

Many people have their doubts because quite frankly, they have lost confidence in the system and so have the public who don’t trust the people who run it.

When I met the new NDIS Minister Amanda Rishworth in Canberra, before she was handed this poisoned chalice, she genuinely cared about improving the lives of people with a disability.

She needs to succeed, because at the moment the scheme is harming some participants, not helping them – and costing us all a fortune.

Originally published as NDIS’ inefficiencies are ‘costing us a fortune’: Julie Cross