NDIS Allied Health 2025-26: Why Quality and Communication Will Win in a Saturated Market
In today’s mature and competitive NDIS Allied Health market, quality and communication are two of the most important levers you can pull, particularly for smaller providers who cannot compete on scale or budget.
By quality, I mean more than just delivering good therapy. It is about consistent participant outcomes and a smooth, predictable experience from first contact to discharge or ongoing support.
By communication, I mean the “customer service” side of things — prompt responses, keeping referrers updated, setting realistic expectations, and resolving problems before they escalate. Many referrers value this just as much, if not more, than the clinical outcomes themselves.
Too many providers focus solely on clinical skill, forgetting that every participant and referrer is also a customer. Great service and great therapy together are what keep people coming back.
Here is what has changed since July 1 and how providers can adapt.
A Mature Market After the July 1 Changes
The NDIS allied health sector in 2025 is a very different landscape to what it was even a couple of years ago. The gold rush is over.
The market has matured, competition has intensified, and the easy growth of earlier years has slowed. July 1 brought another round of changes through the Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits (PAPL) and the Annual Price Review (APR). Those updates have now settled in. Claims have adjusted. Providers have recalculated. And perhaps most noticeably, the noise has died down.
But this quiet feels more like the calm before the storm.
The providers who will thrive in this next phase will be the ones who focus relentlessly on quality and communication, not just survival. If you missed my detailed breakdown of these changes, see my article: July 1 Is Here: An Honest Look at the NDIS, Allied Health and What Comes Next.
From Quantity to Quality
When I launched my previous Allied Health company in 2020, we grew from start-up to 300+ staff and over $15M in revenue within a few years. In the early days, growth was driven almost entirely by capacity. The demand was there, the market was booming, and simply having availability was enough to attract referrals.
That approach would fail in 2025.
In today’s mature market, everyone has capacity. The question is: what’s your point of difference?
Scaling quickly without strong quality controls will damage your reputation, burn your team, and push referrers away. The sector is more discerning. Participants and support coordinators have more choice and more information than ever before.
Quantity still matters, but only if you can maintain exceptional quality and consistent communication at the same time.
Choice and Control — Appreciate it
One of the best features of the NDIS, and one that too often gets overlooked in industry discussions, is choice and control.
Participants can choose their provider. That is incredibly rare in government-funded schemes, and it is incredibly empowering for people with disabilities. It keeps providers accountable in ways many industries never have to face.
For Allied Health businesses, this means quality is not a “nice to have” — it is your core competitive advantage. Pricing is capped. Marketing can get you attention. But providing a great service, delivering clear updates, and following through on promises are what keep participants coming back and referrers recommending you.
Most providers focus heavily on clinical quality (which is essential) but don’t think of themselves as delivering “customer service.” The reality is your referrers care just as much (if not more) about customer service than they do about your clinical skills. If you are slow to reply, hard to reach, and difficult to work with, they will send referrals elsewhere, no matter how good your clinicians are.
Support Coordinators: Phenomenal Allies in a Tough Job
The Support Coordinators (SCs) who are still in the role in 2025 are phenomenal. They have weathered stagnant prices, admin overload and constant sector shifts, yet they remain passionate advocates for their participants. I personally believe they are the most hard done by and underappreciated category of service across the entire NDIS.
These are some examples I have seen on LinkedIn just in the last week:
Lisa Macleod called out “collaboration” offers that are really just referral swaps.
Sue Grier labelled these swaps unethical and reminded providers that SCs do not “trade” participants.
Nerma Huskic said she would rather work with a small, organised provider than a slow big one.
Jessica Bolan shared her frustrations with providers: not reading referrals, staff unable to answer basic questions, dishonesty about wait times and failing to deliver on promises without communicating delays.
The message is consistent: if you respect an SC’s time and deliver quality, they will refer to you over the big players.
One of the best things you can do for your business is to make their job easier:
Communicate proactively
Respond promptly to emails and calls
Keep them informed, even with bad news
Deliver when you say you will
Own mistakes and fix them quickly
In a crowded market, strong SC relationships can be the difference between steady referrals and an empty pipeline.
If you want to explore more on referral relationships, see my previous article: Marketing, Networking, BD & Sales: What’s the Difference and Why Does It Matter?.
Consolidation Is Now the Growth Path for Large Providers
In a saturated market, organic growth at scale is hard. Large providers are turning to acquisition.
The $70 million acquisition of Plena Healthcare by Australian Unity is a prime example. While this is largely in the aged care space rather than NDIS, it’s still a clear sign of where the sector is heading.
As I wrote recently on LinkedIn: “The time to buy is when there’s blood in the streets”. Big players are actively looking for distressed or undervalued businesses they can acquire to quickly increase market share.
In the past, a large provider could grow by recruiting a clinician anywhere and then filling their caseload — a strategy we called “recruiting ahead of revenue.” It worked because demand was high, the market had gaps and referrals were almost guaranteed.
That approach is far riskier now. You generally need at least some existing caseload to justify new hires. Recruiting ahead of revenue without demand already in place can leave you carrying costs you can’t recover.
As such, this is how the big end of town grows now: through acquisition, not one-by-one recruitment.
For small and medium providers, this isn’t necessarily a threat — it can be an opportunity. You can’t outspend the corporates, but you can out-serve them. Be faster, clearer, and more personal. And if your foundations are strong, this could be the perfect moment to expand.
Constant New Entrants — A Sign of a Healthy Market
I am constantly connecting with new people on LinkedIn, and I’m amazed at how many new Allied Health directors, founders, and businesses are popping up all the time.
Fresh energy is good for the sector. It shows that people still see opportunity in the NDIS space and that participants still value having choice beyond the big players. Many people prefer working in, and being supported by, smaller, ethical, and highly personalised environments.
I want to make it clear, I’m not anti-corporate — there are excellent large providers out there delivering outstanding outcomes. A healthy market needs ethical providers of all sizes. But whether you are big or small, the fundamentals do not change.
Running an NDIS allied health business is complex: compliance, cash flow, recruitment, culture, marketing… it is a long list. The $193.99 hourly rate went a lot further a few years ago — and it hid a lot of inefficiencies, allowing some businesses to survive despite underutilised clinicians, bloated admin teams and high overheads. That era is over. The NDIA will not prop up poorly run businesses.
If your costs are out of step with your output, the next round of changes could sink you. (See my previous blog: NDIS APR 2024–25: The Real Cost for Allied Health).
More Change Is Coming
The sector is far from done evolving, and many of the changes ahead will challenge providers. Expect:
More pricing changes, most likely decreases/stagnation rather than increases
Mandatory registration/regulation and higher compliance requirements
Tighter rules for unregistered providers
Needs assessments affecting NDIS report writing time
The introduction and expansion of foundational supports
Award wage increases pushing up staffing costs
As requirements tighten, we will see more of the “cash grab” operators exit the sector — those who joined the NDIS purely for quick money, without building a sustainable or participant-focused business. In the long run, this is good for participants and for genuine providers.
If you’re already struggling, these shifts will make it harder. Build resilience now, improve efficiency, strengthen relationships, and know your numbers inside out.
As I shared in my NDIS Lemon post, if you’re squeezing every last billable minute out of your services just to survive, you’ll have no levers left to pull when changes land. The July 1 adjustments caught a lot of providers in exactly that position. Those with healthier models absorbed the impact — those without are now scrambling to adapt.
The Fundamentals That Don’t Change
I have run an allied health business from start-up to more than $15M in revenue, and I now work with providers of all sizes. The fundamentals for long-term success remain the same:
Quality: Deliver services that matter and get results
Communication: Keep participants, families, and referrers informed at all times
Ethics: Make decisions and run your business in a way that aligns with your values and supports the best outcomes for participants
These are not “extras” — they are what will keep you in business in a changing market.
Key Takeaways
Quality and communication are two of the most effective levers you can pull in a capped-price market — especially for smaller providers
Ethical providers will win, and they will always have a place in the NDIS Allied Health ecosystem
The departure of dodgy operators is good for participants and the sector
More change is coming, so build a business that can handle it now
If you want to discuss how these changes affect your business and map out a sustainable path forward, book a free strategy call with me. We will review your position, identify where to improve efficiency and resilience, consider diversification, and create a plan for growth in a changing NDIS landscape.
