How many physio sessions does your NDIS plan actually buy?

You can work it out, and it takes about five minutes. The figure is already in the plan under Improved Daily Living. What nobody tells you is that the visits are not the only thing coming out of it, which is why the number of appointments is always smaller than the division suggests.

Here is what to subtract, and what to ask before anything is booked.

Start with the right number

Improved Daily Living is a Capacity Building budget, and the NDIS says the funding is for supports that “help build your living skills and increase your independence”, naming “physiotherapy or occupational therapy” as examples.

Two things follow. That figure is the ceiling for therapy, and it is a stated support — “You can’t use or swap this funding for something else.” Money sitting in another category cannot be moved across to cover more physiotherapy.

If physiotherapy, occupational therapy and speech all come out of the same figure, they are sharing it.

What else comes out of it

This is where the estimate usually goes wrong. Depending on the provider and what has been agreed, the budget may also be paying for:

• Travel time to and from the visit. For a mobile service this is the big one, and it is charged at a set proportion of the session rate.
• Report writing. A therapy report for a plan reassessment takes time, and that time is generally claimable.
• The initial assessment, which is usually longer than an ordinary session.
• Short-notice cancellations, where the provider chooses to charge for them.

None of these are rorts. They are legitimate and they are in the pricing rules. But a family dividing the budget by an hourly rate and getting forty visits will not get forty visits, and finding that out in August is the wrong time.

The four questions to ask before booking

Ask these of any provider, including us. A service that tracks its own numbers answers all four without hesitating.

• What does a visit cost against my plan, all in? Not the hourly rate. The figure that will actually appear on the claim, including travel.
• Does report writing come out of my budget, and roughly how much? Ask before the reassessment, not after the invoice.
• How many visits does that leave, at the frequency you are recommending? Make them do the arithmetic in front of you.
• What happens if the budget runs out before the plan ends? The answer should exist before you need it.

Then ask the question that actually matters

How many visits is the wrong thing to optimise. Twenty visits that repeat the same exercises buy attendance. Twelve that progress, get measured and leave a home program behind buy a result.

So the better question is what each visit is meant to change, and how anyone will know whether it did. The signs a program has stopped progressing are worth reading before you commit a budget to it, because a program that sits still is expensive at any number of sessions.

One change coming

From 1 October 2026, Improved Daily Living budgets reduce by 10%, applied as plans are created, reassessed or renewed. The arithmetic above does not change. The number you start from does, and the case for spending it on visits that progress rather than visits that repeat gets stronger.

What the budget covers in the first place is in our guide to Improved Daily Living, and our NDIS page covers how visits work here. If you want the numbers run against your own plan, ring and we will do it on the phone.