Top 5 Business Opportunities for NDIS Providers [Updated]
The NDIS is a multi-billion dollar market that is tipped to expand significantly toward the $30B mark by 2025, making it one of the best business opportunities in Australia.
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We wanted to spare you the headache of looking for NDIS business opportunities by using our internal knowledge, and we’ve settled on 5 of them:
- Starting a local business
- Expanding existing care services
- Focusing on specialized supports
- Providing consulting to NDIS providers
- Starting a plan management business
This article is designed to help you navigate this growing market and the fantastic business opportunities that the NDIS provides right now (or that will exist in the near future).
Great Supports Are The Core of an NDIS Business
Understanding how to create a successful NDIS business is the most important part of helping you secure significant market share and considerable profits.
However, if you are only interested in taking up a business opportunity to realise great profit margins, this is not the sector for you.
Working with people with disabilities is a high-risk job.
“NDIS providers and plan managers are called upon to promote the overall well-being of participants.”
NDIS businesses are called upon to promote the overall health, safety and wellbeing of people with a disability, as per the NDIS Code of Conduct.
Therefore, it’s never a good idea to decide you want to try and build your NDIS business up as an overnight success. Focus on providing fantastic supports—the rest will come.
Note: If you’re new to the NDIS, a “support” is a specific service recognised by the National Disability Insurance Agency as eligible for funding. Depending on the type of support offered, there are maximum rates you can charge under the NDIS, as well as a maximum budget.
Why Compliance Is Key To Your Success with the NDIS
It is pivotal that your NDIS business is in compliance with the NDIA. Not doing so means you will receive notices of infringement or other enforcement actions, ultimately leading to halting your business altogether if neglected for too long (and depending on severity).
As outlined by the NDIS Compliance and Enforcement Policy, monitoring compliance isn’t about punishing NDIS service providers; it’s about ensuring safeguards are in place when working with people with a disability.
When working with a group of vulnerable people, it is essential that businesses follow best practices to ensure the life goals and dignity of their clients are respected and upheld at all times. Not only that, having robust risk mitigation strategies in place is integral.
If you are thinking about taking up an NDIS business opportunity, you need to be proactive when it comes to compliance.
Important tasks such as issuing mandatory incident reports immediately should be instated as part of your company culture from day 1.
5 NDIS Business Opportunities You Can’t Ignore
The NDIS is brimming with interesting business opportunities. That is, as long as you can provide the right expertise to make the best of them. Here are 5 to consider:
Opportunity #1: Starting an NDIS Provider Business Locally
Every big company started small to begin with. Creating an NDIS business that offers localised, individual care is the quintessential NDIS business opportunity.
Starting your business in this way means you will learn from the ground up how to take into account NDIS participants’ individual needs and help them achieve their life goals.
“Creating a business that offers localised, individual care is the quintessential NDIS business opportunity.”
However, it also means competing in a growing market which sees 100s of new providers open shop every year. That’s why you need to think closely about your competitive advantage.
With the help of Local Area Coordination (LAC) offices, and certified knowledge in a specific support area covered by the NDIS, starting a local provider business won’t be too hard.
Opportunity #2: Expanding Your Existing Health Services
If you’re already a business owner, it’s important to understand how you might expand or pivot your business to capture a slice of the NDIS market.
Developing the services your company already provides to meet the unique needs of people with a disability can help you diversify your service lineup and expand operations.
And, although it pays off to focus solely on NDIS participants, you can well integrate certain supports on top of health services for people without disabilities.
Opportunity #3: Focusing on Specialised NDIS Supports (Niche)
A huge business opportunity exists within the field of disability-related health supports, added to the NDIS towards the end of 2019.
These are specialised supports for:
- Continence
- Diabetic management
- Dysphagia
- Epilepsy
- Nutrition
- Podiatry
- Respiratory
- Wound and pressure care
Specialising in one or more of these areas can land you high-value business in the form of niche but recurring health supports that certain NDIS participants will need more than others.
This is especially attractive if your firm already offers similar services to people without disabilities as it will be easier to adjust while maintaining your core competencies.
Opportunity #4: Offering Business Consulting to NDIS Providers
Although happy to take on a new challenge, most NDIS providers aren’t businesspeople by nature. The vast majority of them come from a health care background.
This makes them highly-likely to seek help in:
- Accounting
- Business management
- Policies and procedures
- Software proficiency
- Legal matters
… and other business-related subjects.
Although everything will need slight re-adaptation to fit in with NDIS requirements, if your consulting firm already offers some of these services, it’s definitely worth a shot.
Opportunity #5: Managing Participants’ Plans (Accounting)
Becoming an NDIS plan manager is a rewarding career.
Plan managers enjoy the rewards of helping people with a disability connect with the right NDIS providers so that they can better achieve their individual life goals.
That said, there are certain prerequisites NDIS plan managers must possess in order to carry out this important—and at times complex—job. If this NDIS business opportunity sounds too good to ignore, check out how to become an NDIS plan manager.
Take Your NDIS Business To the Next Level
The business ideas above should provide some inspiration to help you start a new NDIS business or take your already existing care business to the next level.
What really matters in the disability services industry though is people. Investing in your workers’ education and the participants’ well-being is what matters most.
To do so, you’ll need a way to track both participants and workers at the same time. Brevity helps you achieve just that by providing you with the right tools for both to achieve their goals.
A big problem for people working in the NDIS is accounting for all the extra bureaucracy that the NDIA mandates on top of normal business operations.
Software like Brevity stores all of that information on your behalf without you having to create your own records, making it simple to achieve the most common NDIS-related tasks.
Check out a personalised demo for free today »
Updated Sep 07 2021
Frequently Asked Questions
5 of the best business opportunities in the NDIS today are: 1) Opening a local provider business; 2) Expanding your existing care services; 3) Focusing on specialised NDIS supports; 4) Offering business consulting to NDIS providers, or; 5) Managing participants’ plans.
Yes! The NDIS is meant to get providers to compete in an open-market-like environment by design, promoting high-quality supports offered at fair rates for the participant. This means providers enjoy healthy profits through the official guidelines offered by the NDIA.
