Since the introduction of the Support at Home program, many older Australians and their families have questions about what is actually covered when it comes to physiotherapy. This guide explains how physiotherapy fits within Support at Home, how funding works, and what to expect from a home visit. Support at Home and Allied Health Support …
Since the introduction of the Support at Home program, many older Australians and their families have questions about what is actually covered when it comes to physiotherapy. This guide explains how physiotherapy fits within Support at Home, how funding works, and what to expect from a home visit.
Support at Home and Allied Health
Support at Home is the Australian Government’s program for funding aged care services delivered in a person’s home, replacing the previous Home Care Packages system. Physiotherapy sits within the allied health and therapeutic supports available under the program, alongside services like occupational therapy, podiatry, and dietetics.
For most participants, physiotherapy is accessed as part of their broader care plan, with funding allocated based on their assessed classification level. The classification level determines the overall budget available, and physiotherapy is one of several services that can be drawn from that budget depending on what a participant needs.
What Physiotherapy Services Are Covered
Under Support at Home, physiotherapy covers a broad range of services aimed at maintaining and improving mobility, strength, and independence for older people living at home. This typically includes initial assessments to understand a person’s current mobility, strength, and any pain or movement difficulties, ongoing treatment sessions involving hands-on therapy, exercise programs, and mobility support, falls prevention programs designed to reduce the risk of falls in the home, and post-hospital or post-surgical rehabilitation to support recovery after a hospital stay or procedure.
Physiotherapists may also provide indirect services such as care planning, liaison with other members of a person’s care team, and progress reporting, which support the overall coordination of a participant’s care.
How Funding and Pricing Work
Support at Home physiotherapy is typically delivered through a lead provider, who manages a participant’s overall care plan and budget, and an associate or subcontracted physiotherapy provider who delivers the actual service. The lead provider pays the physiotherapy provider from the participant’s allocated funding, based on agreed rates for direct services such as treatment sessions and indirect services such as assessment reports or care planning.
An important feature of Support at Home is that travel costs for mobile services cannot be charged separately. Instead, travel is built into the service rate itself. This means the price for a physiotherapy session should already reflect the time and cost of a physiotherapist travelling to a participant’s home, with no additional travel fee added afterwards.
What This Means for Participants and Families
For someone receiving physiotherapy under Support at Home, this generally means sessions take place in their own home, with no separate travel charges to worry about, and the cost of physiotherapy comes from their overall care budget rather than being paid for directly out of pocket in most cases.
Because funding is allocated at a program level rather than per service, the number of physiotherapy sessions a participant can access depends on their overall budget and what other services they are also using. This is worth discussing with a care manager when physiotherapy is first being considered, so that sessions can be planned in a way that fits within the broader care plan.
Getting Started with Physiotherapy Under Support at Home
If physiotherapy has been recommended as part of a Support at Home care plan, the process usually starts with a referral from the care manager to a physiotherapy provider. The provider will then arrange an initial assessment, which forms the basis for an ongoing treatment plan tailored to the participant’s goals, whether that is improving mobility, reducing falls risk, recovering from a hospital admission, or maintaining independence at home for longer.
Get in Touch
If you are a care manager looking to refer a Support at Home client for physiotherapy, or a family member with questions about how physiotherapy fits into a care plan, contact Bayside Mobile Physio on 0468 079 075 or [email protected].
