What Exercise Physiologists Should Include in the Initial Report
1. Confirm diagnosis and impairments briefly.
2. Outline baseline assessment results and measures used (you may also state what the norms are to give context to the results). Align these with the NDIS functional domains where possible.
3. Family involvement and what is not reasonable for family to do. More on this below.
4. Participant goals and then you may add therapist sub-goals. Here is an example: Salv would like to be able to talk more confidently with his peers. To achieve this Salv will need to increase his vocabulary, learn strategies to initiate conversation and be able to answer and ask questions.
5. Describe your therapy recommendations including training, travel, assessments and reports. Include the number of therapy hours and be specific about frequency and duration of therapy sessions to help guide funding. You may also recommend Support Worker hours or other professions that should become involved to enable therapy gains to be generalised and incorporated into the person's day to day life and home and community environments.
6. Describe assistive technology and consumable recommendations (if appropriate). Even though consumables don't need a quote, having them in a report can make participants feel more comfortable about purchasing them and can increase funding and flexibility within a Plan.
7. Provide your clinical justification - ideally by linking it to a published evidence base, and even linking to research papers and referencing current available clinical evidence.
Each subsequent report will be similar but should not be exactly the same.
The most obvious difference is that subsequent reports will need to give a summary of the previous plan period, and address:
the current functional impact/s of the disability
the anticipated outcome of your recommended supports and intervention on these functional impacts, and the person's goals
any risks if the recommended supports are not funded.
You will also need to align your recommendation with the Participant's Goal Statement. Subsequent reports should have all the contents of the initial report plus:
attendance records over the past 12 months and strategies to deal with high cancellation rates (if applicable)
barriers or challenges to achieving goals in the past 12 months
new safety concerns (if applicable)
a summary of evidence-based therapy provided
assessment results and measures used, including previous results - be sure to translate these results into NDIS language and link them to the reasonable and necessary criteria and the functional impact of the person's disability
the involvement of family and other support people.