S10 E07 - Less Fluff, More Function: Better NDIS OT Reports
NDIS reporting is changing, but one question remains fundamental for Occupational Therapists: why are we including this information?
Longer reports and more assessments do not automatically create stronger evidence. A useful NDIS OT report needs to demonstrate a participant’s functional needs, connect those needs to their goals and clearly explain why recommended supports are required.
This means moving beyond clinical terminology and assessment scores towards evidence that helps the reader understand what everyday life actually looks like for the participant.
Understand why the report is needed
Before beginning an assessment, Occupational Therapists need to understand why the report has been requested and what decision it is intended to inform.
A plan reassessment based on a change in circumstances requires evidence of a significant and ongoing change. This may involve changes to functional capacity, informal supports or broader life circumstances.
That is different from a situation where a participant believes their existing plan was underfunded. Understanding this distinction early can help avoid spending valuable participant funding on a comprehensive assessment that does not address the issue at hand.
Good onboarding is essential. Clarify what the report is for, what evidence already exists, who else is involved and what information is actually required.
Show what function looks like in everyday life
Once the purpose of the report is clear, the next priority is showing what the participant’s functional needs actually look like.
Occupational Therapists understand terms such as dysregulation, co-regulation, executive functioning and fine motor difficulties. The person reading an NDIS report may not interpret those terms in the same way, so clinical terminology needs to be connected to specific, functional examples.
If a participant became dysregulated during an assessment, what did that look like? What happened and what support did they require? If they have reduced fine motor coordination, how does this affect dressing, eating, handwriting or another meaningful activity?
This is where both top-down and bottom-up thinking have a place. Identifying an impairment such as reduced grip strength, balance or fine motor coordination can provide valuable clinical evidence, but the report also needs to explain what that impairment means for everyday participation.
Functional examples bring the reader into the assessment and make the impact of disability easier to understand.
Choose assessments that add meaningful evidence
With the functional picture established, consider what additional evidence is actually needed to support your clinical reasoning.
Standardised assessments remain an important part of Occupational Therapy practice, but not every available assessment belongs in every NDIS report. Ask: what additional evidence will this assessment provide?
A standardised assessment may validate observations, establish a baseline, support clinical reasoning or provide an outcome measure. In those circumstances, it can be extremely valuable.
However, completing multiple assessments can consume significant participant funding without necessarily changing the recommendations.
The same principle applies to presenting results. Pages of graphs, tables and scores can make a report longer without making it clearer. Often, the Occupational Therapist’s interpretation is more valuable.
Explain what the assessment showed, whether it aligned with other evidence and how the findings informed your recommendations.
Consider value for money
Being selective about assessment also means considering how participant funding is being used.
A useful question is whether you would feel comfortable asking someone to pay privately for everything you are proposing.
This does not mean compromising evidence-based practice or avoiding comprehensive assessment when it is genuinely required. It means being intentional about what each component contributes.
If observation, interview, existing reports and one carefully selected assessment provide sufficient evidence, adding several more assessments may not improve the outcome.
Good clinical reasoning is demonstrated by choosing the right assessment methods and interpreting them well, not by using the greatest number of tools.
Make recommendations specific and defensible
The evidence gathered throughout the assessment should lead logically into clear recommendations.
Simply stating that a participant requires a certain number of support worker hours leaves important questions unanswered. What will the support worker assist with? When is the assistance required? Is the support needed at home or in the community? Is it required during weekdays, evenings or weekends?
These details demonstrate how the recommendation was calculated and why the support is necessary.
Recommendations should also reflect the participant’s assessed needs rather than a provider’s rostering arrangements. If a participant requires one hour of assistance, the Occupational Therapist’s recommendation should reflect that need rather than being increased because of a provider’s minimum shift requirements.
The aim is to make the connection between functional need, required support and recommendation as clear as possible.
Stay within Occupational Therapy scope
Specific recommendations also require Occupational Therapists to be clear about where their professional scope begins and ends.
If an Occupational Therapist identifies a likely need for physiotherapy, speech pathology or another discipline and that professional is not yet involved, it may be appropriate to recommend funding for an assessment.
Prescribing another profession’s ongoing therapy hours without their assessment is different.
Support worker recommendations sit more directly within Occupational Therapy scope because assessing the assistance a participant requires to complete everyday activities is a core part of functional assessment.
Know when a full reassessment isn’t necessary
Providing strong evidence does not always mean completing another functional capacity assessment from scratch.
If a comprehensive assessment was completed relatively recently and most of the participant’s function remains unchanged, an addendum or supplementary report may provide what is needed.
The Occupational Therapist can explain what has been reassessed, identify what has changed and confirm which previous findings remain current. The original report can then accompany the supplementary evidence.
This can provide the required information without unnecessarily using participant funding or repeating work that has already been completed.
Better reports are not necessarily longer
Every assessment, paragraph, graph and recommendation should earn its place in an NDIS OT report.
Ask whether it helps explain the participant’s function, strengthens the evidence or supports the clinical reasoning behind a recommendation.
The goal is not to create the longest report possible. It is to give the reader a clear and accurate picture of the participant’s everyday life and make the reasoning behind each recommendation easy to understand.
Key takeaways for OTs
◆ Clarify why the report is being requested before beginning the assessment
◆ Keep everyday function at the centre of your evidence
◆ Use specific examples to translate clinical terminology into functional impact
◆ Choose assessments according to the meaningful evidence they add
◆ Interpret assessment findings rather than relying on pages of scores and graphs
◆ Make recommendations specific about what support is required, when and why
◆ Recommend according to the participant’s assessed needs rather than provider rostering requirements
◆ Stay within Occupational Therapy scope when discussing other health professionals’ services
◆ Consider an addendum or supplementary report when a full reassessment is unnecessary
Links
OT Unplugged Competition Entry Form: https://www.verveotlearning.com.au/ot-unplugged-competition-sit-at-our-table
Australian Assistive Technology Conference (11 Nov - 13 Nov) https://www.arata.org.au/aatc/aatc-2026/
