In Episode 83, Gerda is asking you to do something that, as a busy practice owner, you probably don’t do nearly enough…

ZOOM OUT.

Yep. It is time to get your head out of the daily grind for a minute, to climb to the top of the mountain, and actually LOOK at what’s happening around you.

In this episode, Gerda takes a big-picture look at the allied health industry and the major forces shaping private practice right now. From changes in funding streams and rising costs to AI, workforce changes and affordability, there’s a LOT happening, and this episode will help you step back and see what it means for the future of your practice.

In this episode, you will learn (among others):

• Why the “old era” of private practice is over.
• What the NDIS redesign and changing government funding landscape could mean for your practice.
• How rising employment costs, Payday Super and cash flow pressures could impact your bottom line.
• Why retention, AI governance and the growing tension between demand and affordability matter when future-proofing your practice.

Who this episode is for:

✔️ Practice owners who feel like running a practice is getting harder and want to understand why.

✔️ Practice owners navigating rising costs, funding uncertainty, cash flow and workforce challenges.

✔️ Allied health business owners who want to future-proof their practice and stay profitable as the industry continues to evolve.

If you’ve been feeling like the landscape is changing faster than your practice can keep up, this episode is your invitation to step out of the day-to-day and look at the horizon. The reality is, what got you here won’t necessarily get you where you need to go next, so NOW is the time to start thinking about what your practice needs for the future.

Here to help you build a future-proof practice you can’t stop smiling about 😊

The 2-Day In-Person 2026 Private Practice Business Intensive

For all the details or to get your ticket CLICK HERE.

Want Gerda’s Help with your Business?

Gerda helps allied health group practice owners go from overwhelmed, overworked, and underpaid to fully empowered and financially thriving. If this is you, then make today the day you reach out. Complete this super short Triage Form here bit.ly/triageformpps and Gerda will personally reach out to you.

Here to help you build a practice you can’t stop smiling about 🙂

Connect with Private Practice Success & Gerda here:

• Would you like Gerda’s help in growing your practice? Step 1 is to complete this short form HERE. Gerda will personally go through your answers and will respond asap.
• Follow the Private Practice Success Facebook Page
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• Connect with Gerda on LinkedIN
• Join the Private Practice Success Facebook Group – exclusive to practice owners.
• Email Gerda directly at gerdam@private-practice-success.com
• Order your hard copy of Gerda’s book, The 7-Figure Practice HERE.
• Ready to work with Gerda? Send in your details HERE and she will be in touch.

 

 

 Well, hello there, fabulous private practice owner. My name is Gerda Muller, and you are listening to the Private Practice Success Podcast, and this is episode number 83. 

Today is a special episode, because we’re going to be doing a special thing. I want to invite you today to come and sit with me at the top of the mountain, as we like to say in the Private Practice Success Academy.  

So what does it mean to sit at the top of the mountain? That is where you, as the practice owner, get your head out of the sand. It’s where you stop being in the daily grind, and you look up. You sit at the top, looking at the horizon, both the horizon in the past, in the back of you, the horizon right in the front, but also what’s happening on the left, what’s happening on the right, on your flanks, as they would say if you go to war, right? Because sometimes we’re good at looking backwards. We are also more or less good at looking forward. Sometimes we do forget to look to our flanks, the sides, because that’s often where the unexpected things pop up, because we weren’t looking.  As a business owner sitting at the top of the mountain, getting a big picture view of what is happening within our industry is fundamental to your role as the private practice owner, and is fundamental to your job of being the leader within your practice. So let’s do that together today. 

Now, needless to say, unless you’ve been living under a freaking rock, you will know that there’s some major forces shaping the allied health private practice industry right now. So I want to talk to you about this to make sure that you’re aware of everything. You might listen to this, and hopefully you’re aware of at least 50, 60, 70% of it. But even if there’s 10% that you weren’t aware of, this would still have been worth the time you’ve spent listening to this episode. 

Industry Overview 

Let’s start by looking at the industry first. So when you look at government data, specifically Jobs and Skills Australia, they collate workplace data for various industries. Now, allied health is grouped within the overarching category that’s referred to as healthcare and social assistance. Now, obviously, allied health is just a small part of that category. For those of you that are interested in this type of data, this industry covers things like hospitals, general and specialist medical services, pathology and diagnostic imaging, dental, and us, allied health, ambulance services, childcare, aged and residential care. So all of that forms part of the healthcare and social assistance industry according to the government when they look at workplace stats, so we are part of that section. 

Now, you may or may not be surprised to hear that this is Australia’s largest employing industry, accounting for 16.3% of the workforce. And last year it added around 95,000 new workers. Another interesting little statistic here is that 76% of this workforce is female. I’m sure that that’s not a surprise to you. But it’s female, and the median age is 40. So that’s just for those that like the data. I’m happy to share with you a link if you’re interested, email me for where you can find this information. But the point here is that this big industry, it’s not a dying industry. It tells me that that big picture industry is really, really important, and we, allied health, is a subsection of that industry. 

The End of an Era for Allied Health 

But allied health specifically, if we now step down and go into allied health, we are moving away from an era that was a very long-standing era, where being clinically excellent, then going on to employ a couple of clinicians, whether that’s as employees or as contractors, and then just keeping the diary reasonably full, was enough to guarantee your success as a group practice owner. That era, I regret to say, is gone. It is gone, and we need to accept it. That was great, but that era is gone. There’s going to be a lot more required from us to build a long-term sustainable allied health private practice. And just let that sink in for a minute. 

And you know what? A lot of people started their practices like that. They were really great clinically, built up an awesome reputation, built up a wait list as a result, and went, “Oh, maybe I should bring somebody else on board.” A lot of times at a whim, very unplanned, became group practice owners. And they looked up one day and they went, “Geez Louise, how did I get here?” And I’ve said over the years, starting an allied health private practice is not hard. It’s not hard. It’s actually pretty easy compared to starting other businesses. What is hard is maintaining it, growing it, building it, and scaling it in a sustainable and profitable manner. That is the part that is hard, and it’s not going to be getting any easier. In fact, it’s going to continue getting harder and harder and harder as a result of the factors that we are going to be talking about next.

The NDIS is Being Redesigned 

So let’s start with the obvious, the NDIS. Right now, the NDIS is being redesigned. Redesigned, not tweaked, not adjusted, not improved > redesigned. Changes introduced by the government through the Getting the NDIS Back on Track legislation has tightened the connection between funded supports and the impairments through which a participant gained access to the scheme. They’ve also changed how plans, funding periods, support categories, and replacement supports operate. So there’s a lot of fundamental changes, AKA redesign, that have been occurring. And at the same time, the governments are building services outside the NDIS through foundational support. The most significant, cue Thriving Kids, and this is a very significant development for paediatric allied health practices.  So Thriving Kids is intended to create this national system of support for children aged eight and under with developmental delays or autism who have low to moderate support needs. And there’s quite a lot of information out there. It’s a bit of a shit show if you ask me. But this is creating an enormous amount of uncertainty and huge potential disruption for practices who have historically built their paediatric service models around kids on the NDIS 

So when we are thinking about NDIS, in the past couple of years when we came to this time of year, people were thinking, ” what’s going to be the new NDIS rate? Are we going to have an increase or not? What’s going to happen with the rate? Are we going to be able to charge for travel?” It was really rates and pricing related. But there’s now much bigger questions that should be asked and answered. Questions such as, who will be funded by the NDIS in the future? And who will be supported through a different system? And who will commission those services –  both within the NDIS and those through Thriving Kids or foundational supports. And will the existing one clinician to one client model actually remain commercially viable for businesses? And more importantly, will the NDIS remain commercially viable for businesses.

Still with the NDIS, there is a very clear and unmistakable shift happening towards stronger provider oversight, which is not a bad thing if you ask me, and I’m sure you can agree with that as well. That being said, I will preface this with – I’m not supportive of mandatory registration for allied health providers. I can see the value with other types of providers, but not providers who have already jumped through significant hoops, such as AHPRA registration to become registered. Now, I’m sure a lot of people will disagree with me on this topic, which I respect, but I have my reasons for it, and maybe I should do a completely different podcast episode on that. But I thought, let me put it out there because I own my opinions. That’s just my thinking about it, because I have never been in favour of unnecessary bureaucracy, and in my opinion, that is unnecessary bureaucracy. Getting somebody to go and get their AHPRA registration and they still need to do this other stuff.  Now, of course, I can hear people saying, “But it’s disability, it’s NDIS, there’s a lot of other stuff.” Yeah, I get all of that. Again, I’m going to pull myself back. I’m not going to go down that rabbit hole right now, but that’s my opinion.

So needless to say, a lot of things happening within the NDIS space, and like anything when you deal with the government, there’s announcements, and then there’s these waiting periods, and then finally we get a little bit of information, and we’re going to get a little bit more and a little bit more, and in the meantime, business owners are in limbo. Yes, you can try and get out your crystal ball, try and predict all these things, but you really don’t know what the government’s going to decide to do, right? So it comes back to going, “How do I future-proof my business?” Particularly if you are in what I would refer to as an NDIS business – where 100%, 90%, I would say even 80 to 70%, let’s say 70% – if 70% or more of your revenue in your business is coming from the NDIS, I would be highly concerned. And, and I’m not here to cause panic, I’m just giving my opinion. I would be highly concerned, and I would be encouraging you to immediately commence diversifying your income streams. And don’t tell me there aren’t options. There is a freaking lot.

Just last week, I was at the two-day Private Practice Business Intensive. I presented a session on future-proofing your practice, and a big part of that was diversification of revenue. I can tell you, I compiled for all the attendees an Excel sheet full of options. Full of options. There’s no reason why your business can’t get through this mess. It can, and it will, if you know what to  do. 

Funding Certainty can no longer be taken for granted 

Okay, so we’ve just spoken about the NDIS that’s being redesigned through the government’s getting the NDIS back on track legislation, which is a case in point that government funding can no longer be taken for granted. That certainty that there’s this pot of money that can be used by our clients or participants or whatever word you use, it can no longer be taken for granted, because when the government decides to change it, to reduce it, you’ve got very little say about it. Yes, I have seen such amazing advocacy being done across various sectors of our industry. I look at people that’s doing that advocacy, and I just take my hat off at them. I have a lot of respect for people doing that type of advocacy, and it is amazing what they’re doing. I myself haven’t been involved in a lot of advocacy, and I say that and my mind goes, “Maybe that’s not good, Gerda.” But I’ve got a different way of looking at business, right? We all do things differently. The way I go is I know that advocacy is amazing and needs to be done, but I also know that it takes a lot of time, money, effort, energy, and the chances of success is very, very slim. 

So as a business owner that still owns three group private practices, and I’m running Private Practice Success Australia, and there’s a lot of practice owners who I’m supporting, many on a one-to-one basis, I also know what my time capacity is, right? And I don’t have the time capacity to do that level of advocacy, which is why I always am extremely thankful when other people are doing it. Because I also know that there’s very little control for us as normal humans on what the government decides to do. That is the job of the peaks, right? It is first and foremost their job. 

So if your peak organisation, so your membership body, if they’re not doing the advocacy that you need them to do for yourself, your discipline, your profession, your clients, then you need to go and talk to them because you are paying them money every year, and that needs to be their job. So we need to hold them accountable for that advocacy because the government might actually listen to them. They’re not going to listen to poor old Gerda Muller, they’re just going to go, ” we’re not going to listen to you. You’re just one tiny little practice owner there in Brisbane, and you’re just harping on about all of this because it’s impacting your bank account, “so I’m not going to waste my time.” That’s just my decision. I expect the people whose job it is to go and do that advocacy. It’s why I pay my membership, and I have always been a member. 

I’ve been a member of the APS since I first arrived in Australia because I had to join back then because back in those days, they were the one that had to sign off on my qualification so that I could practice, and I’ve always been a member. And since the AAPI started, I joined them, and I’ve been a member with them ever since as well. And I would encourage you to be a member of your membership body and for you to make sure that they’re doing the advocacy that they need to do. 

But for me as a group practice owner, and then also for me as an allied health business consultant when I work with my practice owner clients, my job is to make sure that we aren’t reliant on the government and their funding. Like, we’re not public health. We’re not NGOs. We are a private business. If you chose to start a private business, you need to act like one. And yes, when I can help my clients access funding, hell yes, I’m going to do that, right? And this could be funding like Medicare rebates. That’s funding for patients. I’m going to help them access that shit as much as I can, but I’m not going to make my business reliant on it, because that would be shooting myself in the foot. 

So I need you to be aware of whatever funding your clients are using, that is not a freaking given. Yes, Medicare will probably not go away, but hey, the Medicare rebates also hasn’t been keeping up with inflation. If you’ve been relying on Medicare rebates to hit your profit margins, I’m sure your practice doors are closed already, because there will be none if that’s what you’ve been relying on. Funding is not only Medicare, it is workers’ compensation, that’s a funded service. DBA, aged care funding. If you are doing subcontracting to an EAP organisation, that’s funding for your EAP clients that you’re seeing, because that EAP organisation has contracted the work, subcontracted the work out to you. They’re paying you a set rate. If they decide not to increase it this year or to actually make it less, what are you going to do about it? You either need to accept it or you need to walk away. So there is no certainty. So it is up to us to ensure that we’re aware of this, that we look this uncertainty in the eye. That yes, we utilise it as much as you can, but you need to know that it’s not a given because at the end of the day, government funding is a revenue source.

Let’s say if you’re doing NDIS work and you get paid directly by the NDIS when you’ve got a plan managed client, it’s revenue coming into your business. Even if it’s Medicare rebates, for example, it’s a revenue source because it allows people to access your services because let’s say, for example, if you charge $250 for a session, some clients might be able to afford to pay that and some might not. But because there’s a Medicare rebate, let’s say the amount for the rebate, and I’m just using round figures here, is $100. Because the clients get $100 back from Medicare, a lot of people will now be able to access your service because of that rebate. Yes, they still need the $250 up front, but at the end of the day, it only costs them $150 instead of $250 because of the Medicare funding. So government funding is a revenue source, but it is not a business strategy, and it sure as hell shouldn’t be your only revenue source. Big freaking mistake. 

So even if you’re thinking, “Oh, I, I don’t have the worries of the NDIS practices because my clients get Medicare.” Okay. Alright. Well, what stops the government from changing Medicare? Nothing. They just introduce legislation like they did with the NDIS, and you’re up shit creek again without a freaking paddle. So again, you might be a practice that needs to move beyond Medicare. So earlier we spoke about the NDIS. There are some practices that really should be moving beyond the NDIS into diversification. The same holds true for traditional Medicare practices. Maybe it’s time for us to move beyond Medicare and to go, “Oh, if Medicare is 70% plus of my revenue, I need to start supplementing it with other revenue streams.” That is what a practice owner that wants a future-proofed practice will be doing going forward. 

The Cost of Employing People has Risen and will Continue to Rise 

Next, I want to talk to my practice owners who actually have employment models. So you are employing clinicians rather than doing independent contracting or services facilities agreements. Now, some of this will still apply to the latter two if you obviously have an admin team, but the biggest changes I want to talk about right now are for those who employ clinicians. 

The reason being, and I’m sure this comes as no surprise to you, that the cost of employing people has risen and will continue to rise. Not only over the next 12 months, but over the next five years. In July, we had the CPI increase of the award, so all award wages went up by 4.75%. Now, if you are already paying the above award, you weren’t under any obligation to pass that on to your team. I actually did a survey in my Facebook group, and most practice owners said that they’re not passing it on. Why? Because the cost of employing people has risen, and as long as people are still above award after the award increase, they’re good to go. For me, at my practice, even though we also pay the above award, we made the decision to pass that on. I always try my absolute utmost for us to find room in the budget to pass that on. Because I want to make sure that the dollars I’m paying my team can still buy in August 2026 what it was able to buy in August 2025. 

And if the government stats – and this is where I do have to trust the government, and I do trust the government most of the time – when they tell me that CPI has gone up by 4.75%, I’m going to believe that, and I pass that on to my team. And that’s my decision, right? I’m not saying feel sorry for me, or look at me, I’m such a great employer. I’m just going, a lot of people are doing that. I’m not the only one. So, for me, at my business, the cost of employing people has risen. And of course, every year in July there’s going to be a CPI increase, but as you might and probably will be aware, there are more increases on the horizon for our award. And this is as a result of the gender-based undervaluation review and decision that was recently made by Fair Work. 

Long story short, there’s a Fair Work decision that said that for five specific awards, which is very much female-dominated, there is going to be increases happening to those award rates over the next five years. The first of which is happening in October2026. That is like around the corner. And this is not just an award increase, it is an actual reclassification of the levels of our awards with much higher award rates. As a result of this decision, we are going to see across allied health, a 20 to 30% increase of the award rates over the next five years, the first of which is happening in October. Now, depending on what you are paying, this might impact your bottom line or it might not. It all depends on how close you are to that number, but it’s happening. 

Imagine if you are looking at your wages to sales right now, If that is already sitting at 40, 50, 60%, then you’re going to have a problem in the next few years. And you can go, “Oh, well, that’s still years away, Gerda.” The problem is, if you wake up one day and you realise, “Holy shit, I’ve got no money,” it’s too late then. It’s too late. You need to do something about that right now, because otherwise you’re going to have to close your doors, make people redundant, pay them out with money you don’t have, and go and hide in a corner somewhere because you failed at being a business owner. And I’m not saying that to be judgy or to scaremonger, but that’s what’s going to have to happen, and I don’t want that for you. So you need to be aware of what is coming. You need to look it in the eye. You need to do something about it. 

So just for clarity, there were five awards for which this is relevant, and of course for us at my practice, we use the Health Professionals and Support Services Award. If that’s the award you have at your practice, this is relevant to you. And then the other award that’s relevant to our industry, which is more used in the disability side of the allied health industry, is the Social Community Home Care and Disability Services Industry Awards. I think it’s normally referred to as the SCHADS Award. So both of those two are impacted by this Fair Work decision. So it’s really important for you to reflect on How have your business been coping with the rising cost of employing people? And what do you have in place to ensure that you can deal with this over the next five years? A very important question to ask yourself as the business owner. 

Payroll Impacts on Cash-Flow 

Now, still on the topic of employing, more specifically looking at payroll. So the way that payroll, more specifically paying superannuation, has of course changed as of the 1st of July 2026. And this change, which is Payday Super, will be having a significant impact on the cash flow of a lot of allied health practice owners. Now, I know half of you are listening to this and thinking, “That’s not an issue. I’ve been paying, like, super, as part of payday for the last three years.” Well, gold star to you. The fact of the matter is that’s not everybody, right? And even if you’ve been doing what I’ve always done at my practice, because freaking I’m not paying out money out of my bank account unless I have to. I’m not doing it one day early, I would have like a sinking fund for super. 

So I would have a separate bucket bank account that said, “Super,” and I have a separate one for super and a separate one for tax. I’ve got a lot of bank accounts. And I would put everybody’s super every payday in the super bank account, and then at the end of the quarter, I would submit the super, and I would pay it all in one go. But that meant that that money was sitting in my bank account, earning interest for me as the business. And I’m thinking a lot of people might go, “Well, that’s not fair. It should be earning interest for the employee.” Totally get it. I don’t have a problem with Payday Super. But I don’t get to work with people whose businesses are perfect. 

Now, I guess if your business is perfect, I’m pretty sure I can still help you with something because there’s going to be something that you think is perfect that ain’t. But the majority of people that reach out wanting to work with a business coach, mentor, consultant like myself, it’s because there’s a pain point in their business. It’s because they’re stuck. Something’s not working. So the businesses that I get to work with aren’t perfect, and for a lot of businesses, cashflow is a significant problem. So I’m not going to judge, and you shouldn’t judge. None of us have the right to judge a business owner that is just doing their best to keep people employed. 

So I want to be clear, Payday Super is a good thing. It is a good thing because there’s too many people who don’t get paid their super. And I know sometimes business owners might have really great intentions, but they’re not paying the super, and it’s not okay. Nobody should be losing out on it. But at the same time, it’s my job to help practice owners get to that place where they’re going to be okay. Where they can pay the wages of the entire team, plus pay the super without having to take that out of their mortgage, because their business processes, their cashflow forecasting, there’s so many things that go into making this happen. Because I can tell you now, you can have a higher revenue business, higher revenue, and you can still be struggling to pay your bills. It’s just how it is, okay, and if you’ve got a perfect business, you’re listening to this and going, “How does that even happen?” It happens all the time. All the time, So that’s why I’m mentioning this. 

And again, like I said, all of the things I’m going to talk about are not going to be relevant to everybody, and we’re not judging the other business owners out there. This is their time to step up and fix this. Put in place whatever system, process, framework, decision they need to make to ensure that they can fulfill these obligations. Because if you can’t, the consequences are going to be dire. Financial dire consequences. It’s not going to be good, and I fear that people are going to get in big trouble, and they’re going to have to be closing their businesses if you do not decide to face these things head-on. 

And again, I’m not talking to you if you’ve got this under control. You can skip through this bit. There’s more coming that might be relevant to your business. Because for a lot of businesses, this is a big change because a lot of people have relied on this, particularly if your debtors don’t pay very regularly. If you’ve got debtors that pay every week or every fortnight or, God forbid, every 30 days, that’s going to have a big impact on you. 

So again, that comes back to some fundamental decisions about how do I renegotiate these debtor terms? Do I need to diversify again? How can I get paid sooner? At my practice, we’ve got a pre-billing policy. Now, obviously, that applies to all our private and Medicare clients. We bill two days in advance. Works beautifully. One of the best policy changes I’ve ever made within my practice. So that, for example, would be a really important thing for somebody to consider that is really struggling with cash flow because their debtors aren’t paying them soon enough. So if you’re a practice owner listening to this, please make sure that you’ve got this sorted. Please make sure that you reach out for help if you need to fix this. This is the one thing you cannot delay, like I said earlier, because the consequences will be dire. This is the thing you need to fix this week.

Recruitment & Talent Retention 

Let’s talk about recruitment and team retention. Now, for many, many years, recruitment was one of the biggest headaches, or should I say challenges, that group practice owners would report to me. Interestingly enough, over the last 24 months, that has most certainly eased. It has become easier to recruit. Well, at least it has for us at my group private practice and for the clients that I work with. That has become easier. And I think what is really important going forward here is to, yes, ensure that you keep on recruiting the way that you need to, and there’s actually nine steps to successful recruitment. 

But once you’ve done that, now team retention becomes really your focus. And if you want a future-proofed practice, you’re going to have to recruit great talent, and then you want to do whatever you can to keep them. No, you’re not going to be held hostage by your team. Some people can demand certain things and go, “You give me that or I’m out of here.” We’re not going to just give in to any and all requests, but we’re going to do our absolute best to create a work environment where people choose to stay. Where they have a genuine career pathway. Where they are truly supported, not just words on a job ad, truly day to day, the proof is in the pudding. They are truly supported. Their workload is sustainable. Their expectations are clear. They know what is expected of them, and they show up and they do what they need to do. They’ve got leaders that are looking after them.

So you have to ensure that you’ve got a process in place to achieve that, because the one thing that is true is that you cannot recruit your way out of poor culture, poor onboarding, poor leadership, or an unprofitable employment model. You can’t. So you need to recruit well, and then you need to retain those people. Once you’ve decided that somebody is a good culture and values fit, and the two of you have agreed that you are a match made in heaven and you’re going to work together, now you want to continue building that relationship by looking after that person, because if you look after your clinicians, guess what? They look after the clients, and guess what happens then? Your business is looked after. So that’s a win-win scenario. You can’t just go, “I’ll just recruit more.” 

And the fact of the matter is, right now, out there in the industry, there’s a lot of group practices with open rooms. Rooms with no clinician bums on seats. And people are trying everything and anything to get bums on seats. Making a lot of wrong decisions to get bums on seats. It’s normally when they realise that that they start working with me, and I’m there, I’m there for you. That’s what I do. I know how to fix situations like that. And no, having a services room rental agreement is not the answer here. Nothing wrong with those models. They’re actually really great, but employment is just as great. Independent contracting is just as great. Services facilities are just as great. But you need to do every model properly. 

Every model has its pros and its cons, and within each of those models, irrespective of which one it is, retention will be important. If it’s your employees, it’s your team, if it’s your independent contractors, it’s about retaining them, engaged in your business by being able to give them work. If it’s your room and services agreement, it is about retaining them as your business clients because you are now delivering a service to them, and you want to retain them because they can also leave when they decide to do so. So retention is very, very important in order to have a future-proofed business.

The Arrival and Impact of AI Now 

Now we can’t talk about future-proofing your business and the state of the allied health industry without talking about artificial intelligence, AI, because AI has truly arrived my friend. I’m pretty sure that right now… Well, I’m not pretty sure. Let me guess. I’m going to guess that AI is already being used within your practice for clinical notes, transcription, writing reports and other correspondence, maybe email. You’re probably using it for your marketing, maybe using it for your recruitment. You might even be using it to write your policies and procedures, drafting your client communication, doing some data analysis, doing your website, just generally helping with administration, right? Nothing wrong with that. 

We use it as well as my practice. I use it as well, but it’s all in the how. Because the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, AHPRA, has made it very clear that for every practitioner, your existing professional obligations still apply when using AI. These are obligations specifically related to data collection, communication, and very importantly, privacy. So the Privacy Act still applies when you’re using AI tools, when you’re handling people’s personal information. So if you’re using chatbots, transcription tools, productivity assistance, have you actually looked into it a bit more? Because yes, you might have your practice approved transcription software that we use, but do you really know how your clinicians are using AI? Are they just using that or are they also using ChatGPT to run a report through? Are they using Claude, something else to check their reports or to come up with suggestions without knowing that everything that you share in there is shared, unless you’ve actually gone into the back end and ticked a little box that says, “Don’t share my information.” Do they know that that’s actually a data breach happening without them even knowing? 

So how do your team use AI? Do you know? Have you checked? Have you educated them on it? Because we absolutely have to embrace AI. Not embracing it will turn your business into a blockbuster. You will be irrelevant very, very soon. But you need to use AI in the right manner, in a compliant manner, and as allied health professionals, we have a responsibility to do that. I know that AI can feel like it saves you so much time, and yes, it can, and that’s what it’s there for. It’s there to improve our efficiency, to improve our capacity to get stuff done, but we have to make sure that we protect client information. We absolutely have to. 

So have you done that? Because the question is no longer whether your team is using AI unofficially or not, they are. So do you know how they’re using it? What information are they entering? What’s happening with that information? And who remains accountable for that information when they are using it. So if you want to build a future-proof practice, you’re going to need proper AI governance and not merely an enthusiasm for AI, because I know people get very excited about it, very hyped up about it, and that’s okay, but you need to balance the enthusiasm with the governance and the compliance. Have you done that? 

Demand is Growing, but Affordability is Becoming a Constraint 

I want to finish off by talking about demand and affordability, because what I see is that the allied health industry is sitting in a very peculiar predicament right now. Because our communities need our services. They need it now more than ever. Allied health, mental health, these are essential services. But the issue is that the households of our clients, the households of our team, but particularly the households of our clients who need to pay for our services, are under incredible pressure. Of course, unless you’re working with a market that doesn’t have this, I’m talking about the average Australian. 

At my practice, we serve the average Australian. The average Australian is struggling right now. They have to think twice before they spend every dollar that’s in their bank account. so they need us, but they need to think twice. “What am I going to do with the money that I have? I’m under this financial pressure. I need to pay the bills. I need to feed my kids.” All of those obligations that they have, right? And then at the same time, here you’ve got the government making decisions about price limits, rebates, all of those interesting things. The funding isn’t going up the way that it should. 

Then you’ve got your clinicians, you’ve got your amazing team, and I will include here not only clinicians, but admin team members as well, who want and 100% deserve better pay, regular increases, for business owners to be able to pass on the annual CPI increase. If you’re a business and you can’t afford to do that, that tells you there’s an issue here somewhere. So our clinicians and our admin team deserve better remuneration. And then we still don’t forget about the owner. You, the business owner, are taking all the risks. You still need to maintain a margin that allows you to build a sustainable business, because that is your job as the business owner, is to maintain that margin. 

So all of this causes tension. Tension about fees, pricing, service lengths. What do we do, how do we make decisions? What’s the right thing here? Because the one thing I want to warn you about is this: if you’ve got a practice or a business, and your solution to this is to simply add every increase that you have, so we’ve spoken about employment going up and up. So if every time there’s an increase, you just add that amount of money to your session fee, which sounds like the logical solution, right? You know what’s going to happen eventually? You’re going to reach an affordability ceiling. And I want you to stop here for a minute. I want you to really think, has that already occurred in your marketplace? Have people been complaining more when they call in that they can’t afford your rates or they’re looking for bulk billing, has that been happening? Have people been saying, “Oh, I can’t come weekly anymore, I need to come fortnightly,” or, “I can’t come fortnightly anymore, I’m now going to come every four weeks so that I can stretch my funding or stretch my money because I can’t afford to come regularly.”  Maybe this is already happening. Maybe you’re starting to see that affordability ceiling. 

And then of course we’ve got the other camp – practices where the practice owner doesn’t increase the client fees, but every time there is more costs, what do they do? They just absorb those costs into the business. The business will just cover it. And what starts to happen, their margins become smaller and smaller and smaller. When I say margin, I’m talking about profit margin. The difference between money coming in and all your expenses. That becomes smaller and smaller and smaller, and guess what happens? They reach a profit ceiling, and some of them don’t even have a profit ceiling, they just have no profit. Has that been happening to you? Have you been seeing your profit decrease over the last three years? Maybe that’s the situation you’re finding yourself in. So you need to be aware that every decision you make in your business has an impact. 

You might not feel that decision tomorrow, next week, or next month. It can take 12 months. It can take two years, three years, and then one day you’re going to wake up and you’re going to go, “What the hell just happened? How did I get here? I worked so hard. I tried to do the right thing. How did I end up here?” And a lot of times it’s these decisions we make that we think is the right decision, but ultimately it has long-term consequences. So I really want you to think about this. It’s why we are sitting at the top of the mountain today. So that I can bring this into your conscious awareness. So that you have the choice to do something about this.

So if you’ve been reflecting lately and it is feeling like running a private practice is just getting harder and harder and harder, and it’s so much harder than it was 5, 10 years ago, speaking as somebody who’s now had a group practice for 19 freaking years. I can tell you it feels like that because it is harder. The environment has changed. The rules have changed. The workforce has changed. The funding landscape has changed, and all of these things are continuing to change, and the expectations placed upon you as an employer and as a healthcare provider, and as a business owner have increased enormously. So if you’re feeling that stress and that pressure, it’s because it’s real. 

But I want you to remember that allied health, mental health services has never been more important than it is right now. The demand has not disappeared just because people are asking for bulk billing or trying to not come as often or as regularly. The demand is still there. The need is still there, so the opportunity is still there. But what has been slowly disappearing is the ability to run our practices the way we have always run them, and to assume that this will be enough going forward, because it’s not. What got you to where you are today is not going to get you to where you need to be in order to have a future-proof business. A business that is sustainable into the future, that can keep your team employed, that can keep serving your clients and your community. You’re going to have to do something different, whether you like it or not, and none of us like change, but it’s happening, and we need to roll with it.  

As they say in motivational interviewing. You need to roll with your own resistance to it, because I can tell you, I don’t like change either. None of us does. It’s like, geez, you work so hard for everything to be working well, and then all these things start to happen. But it’s like the practice owners that can deal with this are the ones that’re going to get through this, and I want that to be you. And that unfortunately means that you’re going to have to become comfortable with running a business that has healthy profit margins. Therefore, a practice that understands its numbers, a practice that is not dependent on one or two funding streams or one or two only referral sources. A practice that has capable leaders, clear systems, and an ability as a whole team to change before the change is forced upon you. And I know you can do this. 

But what I also know is that this is hard to do by yourself. So if you could resonate with anything that I’ve said today, and if you know that what got you to today is not going to get you to where you need to be without some external input, support, clarity, and some accountability, then please reach out to me. In the show notes, there’s a link to a super short triage form. Complete it, and I will look through that, and I will be in touch. 9 out of 10 times, what I recommend is that we actually book in a 30-minute complimentary clarity call. The only time when I don’t recommend that is when I actually know that I can’t help you just based on your responses, and then I will tell you that, and I’ll tell you why, and I will refer you to somebody else. But I read your responses, so if you can give me details, that helps. I will then go, “Okay, let’s have a chat on a Zoom call. Let’s get to know one another better, and let’s make 100% sure that I can get you to where you want to get to,” because this is what I do. 

I help practice owners grow long-term, sustainable, profitable businesses that serve the clients, the team, as well as the business owner. So don’t delay. It’s going to take five minutes of your time to do the triage form, and it’s going to take 30 minutes of your time to chat with me on a clarity call. That’s 35 minutes that can change everything. What do you have to lose? And now I know that I have raised this with you, so I’ve done my job to go, “You need to look out for this.” What you do from here, well, the ball is now in your court. You can take the ball and you can drop it, or you can take the ball and you can run and you can score, and I will be at the sideline cheering you every step of the way. 

Alrighty, we’re going to leave things at that. Thank you so very much for tuning in, and as always, remember that I am here to help you build a future-proof practice you can’t stop smiling about 😊