Renewed push to integrate GPs into NDIS

RACGP President Dr Nicole Higgins hopes the college’s latest submission to the Federal Government will fix a ‘fragmented’ NDIS and reverse the exclusion of GPs from the national program’s structure.
 
Dr Higgins, who knows the system from both sides having two siblings living with disabilities, said the current overhaul needs to finally put GPs in the picture first when someone is entering the system.
 
‘They’re not including GPs at the beginning or during and so they may only come in after there has been a problem,’ she told newsGP.

‘There’s been a lost opportunity along the way to bring people’s GP along the journey with them and people should expect that their GP is part of that process.’
 
Dr Higgins said the RACGP’s latest submission to the NDIS Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024 was another opportunity for the Government to bring in NDIS participants’ primary care providers.
 
‘GPs have often been there since the person was born and all through their journey,’ she said.
 
‘GPs also bring the context of knowing the family and the supports and community context when we’re trying to support somebody with their disability needs and health needs, so they need to be able to then advocate for the person that’s sitting in front of them.
 
‘Without that you have a system that’s fragmented and causes duplication, increases costs and sometimes can cause harm to the person that it is trying to support.’
 
Dr Higgins said she sees systemic NDIS failures first-hand.
 
‘One of my patients, who has a congenital disability, was charged $10,000 by a healthcare provider for an assessment that was done remotely over a two-hour phone call just to deliver the paperwork,’ she said.
 
‘That used up a huge amount of their package.
 
‘I came into the story late when her mother asked, “what do we do?”
 
 ‘A lot of that information was already available if the GP had been involved from the start.’
 
The RACGP’s recommendations to the Government also include making NDIS forms more user-friendly and able to integrate with general practice software, Dr Higgins said.
 
‘The current NDIS Access Request Form is overly complicated and makes it hard for GPs to articulate the impact of a patient’s functional impairment,’ she said.
 
Dr Higgins has previously met with Federal Health and Aged Care Minister Mark Butler and NDIS Minister Bill Shorten to push for change.
 
Associate Professor Robert Davis, Chair of RACGP Specific Interests Disability, said the Government of the day did not consult enough with existing services and bypassed GPs when the NDIS was rolled out, but that there are some promising glimpses of change.
 
‘They are gearing towards assessments around the capability of a person rather than around a diagnosis, which I think in the long run is a good thing,’ he said.
 
‘But what goes with that are some standardised assessments that don’t really cover the complexity that comes with a lot of our patients.
 
‘A lot of our patients will have more than one condition considered in their disability.
 
‘There will be challenges in providing appropriate support for people if they don’t get across the complexity of the disability.’
 
NDIS Minister Bill Shorten and the NDIS have been contacted for comment.
 
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