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An NDIS progress report, called a plan reassessment report in current NDIA language, is the document a treating allied health provider writes toward the end of a participant's plan period. It summarises the supports delivered, evidences progress against a functional baseline using named outcome measures, and justifies recommended supports for the next plan against the NDIS reasonable and necessary criteria. Most run 3 to 6 pages.
Psychologists, occupational therapists, speech pathologists, physiotherapists and other treating allied health providers; provisional psychologists under supervision
The participant and their supports, the support coordinator, and the NDIA delegate deciding the next plan
1,200 to 3,000 words (3 to 6 pages) · 2 to 4 hours of scoring, collateral review and writing (clinical team estimate)
NDIS evidence report (compare: functional capacity assessment, support coordination report)
In the weeks before the plan reassessment date, or when a participant seeks a s 48 reassessment after a change in circumstances
No law or NDIA rule mandates the report or a template; NDIA guidance shapes the content, and the s 34 criteria decide the funding
An NDIS plan reassessment report, still called an NDIS progress report by most clinicians, is the document a treating allied health provider writes toward the end of a participant's plan period. It does three jobs: summarises the NDIS supports delivered under the current plan, evidences the participant's progress toward funded goals against a functional baseline, and recommends supports for the next plan period with justification the National Disability Insurance Agency can act on. The NDIA's guidance for allied health providers frames the report's purpose as helping the Agency decide whether the supports you recommend "meet our reasonable and necessary criteria to fund". The document is a creature of the NDIS Act 2013 rather than of any professional college: s 48 governs reassessment, s 50 lets the CEO call for information and reports, and s 34's reasonable and necessary criteria are the test every recommendation must survive. The renaming matters, too. The NDIA now says plan reassessment (s 48) to keep it distinct from internal review of a decision (s 100) and plan variation (s 47A), three mechanisms older template pages run together. The same document also answers to progress report, plan review report, therapy report, and S48 report.
Two facts reorganise how the report is written, and both are missing from most template pages. First, no statute, NDIS rule, or NDIA instrument compels a treating provider to write one, and none prescribes a template: the NDIA standardises adjacent documents, the Evidence of Psychosocial Disability form, assistive technology and home modification templates, the early childhood provider report, but deliberately not this one. The format is a convention; the persuasive content is the requirement. Second, the report is participant-controlled: NDIA guidance directs the provider to give the finished report to the participant, who then shares it with the Agency, so the participant, not the clinician, decides release. That also draws the boundary with its heavier neighbour. An NDIS functional capacity assessment is a standalone, in-depth assessment used when a new baseline or a major funding question is at stake; the reassessment report is lighter, longitudinal and progress-focused, and usually cites the most recent FCA rather than repeating it. A treatment plan review lives in the clinical record and serves continuity of care; it is not written to the s 34 framework and does not substitute.
Any treating allied health provider whose supports are funded in the plan writes one: psychologists delivering capacity-building supports for psychosocial disability, occupational therapists, speech pathologists, physiotherapists and behaviour support practitioners. Provisional psychologists and students on placement can deliver supports and contribute to the report under supervision, with the participant's consent documented in the service agreement; NDIA-managed plans require a registered provider, and the supervising psychologist remains responsible for the interpretation and the reporting. The trigger is the plan cycle: a report is commissioned in the weeks before the plan's reassessment date, or earlier when circumstances change and the participant asks the CEO to reassess under s 48, a request the Agency must answer within 21 days. Choose the document to match the question. Progress against existing goals belongs here; a new baseline or a high-stakes funding question belongs in a functional capacity assessment; a diagnostic question belongs in a psychological evaluation report; and Medicare's Better Access pathway is a different payer with a different statutory test, so a report written for one never serves the other. The audience is about to shift at the margins as well: from 1 October 2026 the Thriving Kids foundational-supports transition begins moving children aged 8 and under with lower-level developmental needs out of the scheme, reshaping who needs these reports at all.
Participant, provider and service details. Participant name, NDIS number, date of birth and plan period; provider and author details with credentials and registration; and the service pattern: date of first service, most recent service, and total sessions delivered. The contact pattern is evidence in its own right: in Ray [2020] AATA 3452 the Tribunal preferred the treating psychologist who had seen the applicant on "approximately 50 to 60 occasions" over the NDIA's one-off independent assessor. Pitfall: omitting frequency and duration of contact, the very fact that gives a treating provider's observations their weight.
Supports delivered this plan period. What was funded and what was actually delivered: support type, frequency, setting, attendance, and the plan goals each support served. Pitfall: a therapy diary instead of a delivery account; the delegate needs delivered-versus-funded and goal linkage, not session narratives.
Functional baseline and outcome measures. The participant's functional capacity at the start of the plan period and the instruments that quantified it, repeated at reassessment. The NDIA's own examples are physical measures such as the Timed Up and Go and the Berg Balance Scale; psychologists more often reach for the WHODAS 2.0, goal attainment scaling, or a symptom measure tied to function (see the outcome measure note). No instrument is mandated; a named one beats an adjective every time. Pitfall: progress claims with no baseline; change cannot be shown without a starting point.
Progress toward each goal. Goal by goal: the measured change, what it means functionally, and an explanation wherever a goal was not achieved. Pitfall: documenting diagnosis and treatment instead of functional impact; evidence that explains the condition rather than how it affects daily activities is the dominant documented reason NDIS evidence falls short.
Barriers, risks and informal supports. Barriers encountered and how they were addressed, risks in delivering supports and how they are managed, and the informal, community and mainstream supports in the participant's life. Pitfall: treating informal supports as none of the report's business; s 34 makes them part of the funding test, and silence reads as an unexamined recommendation.
Recommendations for the next plan period. Each recommended support with frequency, intensity and duration, argued against the reasonable and necessary criteria: related to the disability, effective and beneficial per current good practice, value for money, informal supports taken into account, and not more appropriately funded by the health or education system. State expected outcomes and how they will be measured. Pitfall: recommendations stated as preferences; the delegate funds arguments, not requests.
Author details, declaration and release. Name, credentials, registration details, signature and date; a supervisor countersignature where a provisional psychologist contributed; and a record that the report was provided to the participant. Pitfall: importing vendor rules as law; no instrument requires an AHPRA number on the report, per-page signatures or a fixed section count, and time spent on invented formalities is better spent on the s 34 argument.
NDIS PLAN REASSESSMENT / PROGRESS REPORT (CONFIDENTIAL) Participant: ____________________ NDIS number: _______________ Date of birth: __________ Plan period: __________ to __________ Provider (registered / unregistered): __________________________ Author (name, credentials, registration): ______________________ First service: __________ Most recent: __________ Total: ____ SUPPORTS DELIVERED THIS PLAN PERIOD (type, frequency, setting, attendance, linked plan goals) _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ FUNCTIONAL BASELINE AND OUTCOME MEASURES (instrument, date and score at plan start; repeat measure at reassessment) _______________________________________________________________ PROGRESS TOWARD EACH GOAL (measured change; explain any goal not achieved) _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ BARRIERS AND RISKS; INFORMAL, COMMUNITY, MAINSTREAM SUPPORTS _______________________________________________________________ RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE NEXT PLAN (support, frequency, duration; reasonable and necessary justification; expected outcomes) _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ Provided to the participant on: __________ Signature, credentials and date: _______________________________
Free to use and share, no signup. The PDF includes a one-page cheat sheet with section-by-section pitfalls and a pre-sign checklist; the DOCX is the blank template, ready to adapt.
Scenario: a registered psychologist writes the plan reassessment report for an adult participant with psychosocial disability, ahead of the plan's August 2026 reassessment date. The sample is condensed but structurally complete; a full report runs 3 to 6 pages. All details are fictional.
NDIS Plan Reassessment Report (Progress Report). Participant: J.L., 34 · NDIS number: 430 187 265 · Plan period: 26 August 2025 to 25 August 2026 · Author: R. Nguyen, MPsych, registered psychologist, Harbourline Psychology (registered NDIS provider) · Report date: 24 July 2026
Supports delivered: Under the plan's capacity-building funding (improved daily living), Ms L. received 31 of 36 scheduled individual psychology sessions between 4 September 2025 and 21 July 2026, weekly to fortnightly, in clinic and community settings. Work targeted the plan's three goals: independent travel, maintaining her tenancy and daily living routine, and weekly community participation. Non-face-to-face time for this report was agreed in the service agreement of 28 August 2025.
Functional baseline and measures: At plan start (September 2025), WHODAS 2.0 (12-item) total 32, with getting-around and life-activities domains most affected; goal attainment scaling (GAS) baselines were set for each goal. At reassessment (July 2026), WHODAS 2.0 total 21, improvement concentrated in the same domains.
Progress toward goals: Goal 1, travel independently to regular commitments: partly achieved. Ms L. now travels by bus to two standing commitments without support (baseline: none); GAS +1 against a +2 target, with anticipatory anxiety the remaining limiter. Goal 2, maintain tenancy and daily living routine: achieved. No missed rent or utility actions since November 2025; support worker collateral confirms independent completion of the weekly routine built in sessions; GAS +2. Goal 3, join one community activity weekly: not achieved. A two-week psychiatric admission in February 2026 and the recovery period that followed interrupted graded community work; attendance at her chosen group resumed in May 2026 at fortnightly; GAS 0. The goal remains appropriate with the staged approach recommended below.
Barriers, risks and informal supports: The February admission was managed by the community mental health team, which continues to hold clinical treatment of Ms L.'s condition; no NDIS funding is sought for treatment itself. Informal support is one weekly shopping trip with her mother, who reports capacity to continue. No other mainstream services are engaged.
Recommendations for the next plan (12 months): (1) Continue individual psychology fortnightly, 26 hours: related to the psychosocial disability, consistent with current good practice for functional recovery, and value for money in that it is designed to reduce the support-worker hours below. (2) Maintain support worker assistance at 2 hours per week, stepping down to 1 hour from month 6, contingent on Goal 3 progress. (3) No change to transport funding. Expected outcomes by month 9: independent travel to all regular commitments and weekly community participation, measured on the same instruments. Informal supports are unchanged; clinical treatment remains with the health system.
Release: Provided to Ms L. on 24 July 2026 to share with the NDIA as she chooses; a copy is retained in the clinical record. Signed: R. Nguyen, MPsych, registered psychologist (AHPRA reg. PSY0009134712), 24 July 2026.
This sample is fictional and for educational purposes. It does not describe a real patient.
Writing these after every session? BastionGPT drafts complete notes from bullets, dictation, or a transcript.
Generate a note from bulletsThe report has two lives: it is part of your clinical record under your profession's rules, and it becomes evidence in the participant's NDIS record the moment they share it, so write it for both readers. Retention follows health-records law and board expectations rather than any NDIS rule: for psychologists, keep records at least 7 years after the last occasion of service for adults, and for minors until age 25, with some state regimes and organisational policies running to 10 years; the Psychology Board's code of conduct in force since 1 December 2025 makes record-keeping an enforceable conduct standard. Release runs through the participant: NDIA guidance directs you to give the report to the participant, who shares it with the Agency, so record the date you provided it and leave distribution with them; only support coordination reporting routes through the provider portal. Accuracy is an integrity matter as much as a clinical one, because progress documentation supports payment claims and false claims have been prosecuted.
Billing for the report is payer policy, not entitlement. Under the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits, report writing is non-face-to-face service delivery, claimable against the plan only where the service agreement records the participant's agreement and the report relates directly to the funded support, and the hours draw on the participant's own therapy budget, which makes transparency about writing time part of the clinical relationship. The deeper point most template pages miss: the format is a convention; the content is the requirement. The NDIA lists what a persuasive report covers, baseline, measures, progress, barriers, informal supports, justified recommendations, and prescribes none of it as form, so aim the content at the s 34 criteria and the format takes care of itself. Date-stamp your practice, too, because the evidence model is moving: the 2024 amending Act created a statutory needs assessment report (s 32L) for new-framework plans, new variation and reassessment rules commenced in 2025, the pricing arrangements turn over annually, and from 1 October 2026 the Thriving Kids transition begins moving younger children with lower-level needs toward foundational supports outside the scheme. Keep Medicare separate: an NDIS report and a Better Access treatment plan answer different payers and different statutory tests, and neither substitutes for the other. Track outcomes on the instruments you will report with (see the outcome measure note) and the reassessment report largely writes itself.
The system-level numbers explain why these reports are read sceptically. The Auditor-General found the NDIA's decision controls for reasonable and necessary supports wanting, with internal quality reviews of funding decisions "continually below target" (ANAO Report No. 14 of 2020-21), and in 2024-25 about 45% of substantive Administrative Review Tribunal decisions changed the NDIA position: 55% affirmed, 11% varied, 34% set aside (NDIS Quarterly Report, Q4 2024-25). Integrity pressure runs the other way: the Fraud Fusion Taskforce, 23 agencies, has launched more than 630 investigations since 2022 and had disrupted over 1,900 problematic providers by 30 June 2025, and in 2025 two former Sydney providers were jailed over $1.2 million in fraudulent claims, so a progress report is read both as clinical evidence and as a claims-integrity document. The BastionGPT Clinical Advisory Board sees the same errors most often in NDIS progress report reviews:
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No. The NDIA publishes content guidance for allied health plan reassessment reports, not a mandatory template, and no statute or NDIS rule prescribes a format. The prescribed forms exist for adjacent documents instead: the Evidence of Psychosocial Disability form, assistive technology and home modification templates, and the early childhood provider report. Vendor pages selling a required multi-section structure are describing their own synthesis, not law. Cover the NDIA's expected content in a consistent house structure and spend the saved effort on the s 34 argument.
Yes, as non-face-to-face service delivery under the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits, provided the service agreement records the participant's agreement and the report relates directly to the funded support. It is not an automatic or unlimited entitlement, and the hours draw on the participant's own therapy budget, so quote the writing time up front and record the agreement. Support coordinators claim their own reporting separately under different line items.
Give it to the participant. NDIA guidance for allied health providers is that the clinician shares the finished report with the participant, who then shares it with the Agency; the participant controls release and consent. Support coordination reports travel differently, increasingly through the provider portal, which is why so many template pages get this wrong. Record the date you provided the report in your clinical record.
Depth and job. An NDIS functional capacity assessment is a standalone, in-depth assessment across functional domains, commissioned when a new baseline or a major funding question such as supported independent living or home modifications is at stake. The plan reassessment report is lighter and longitudinal: it tracks progress against the existing baseline over one plan period and argues the next plan's supports. A good reassessment report cites the most recent FCA rather than repeating it.
A provisional psychologist or student on placement can deliver supports and contribute to the report under the supervision of a qualified practitioner, with the participant's consent documented in the service agreement. The supervising psychologist remains professionally responsible for the interpretation and reporting, so the supervisor reviews and countersigns as a matter of professional regulation, not NDIA rule. NDIA-managed plans require a registered provider; self-managed and plan-managed participants can engage provisional psychologists more freely.
No statute or rule sets a currency limit or a submission deadline. In practice the NDIA gives most weight to recent functional evidence, practice guidance commonly treats reports older than about 12 months as significantly weaker, and once a reassessment request is accepted the Agency's reported average completion time has been around 33 days, so a report finished close to the reassessment window lands while it is still current. Sustained treating contact adds weight of its own: tribunals have preferred a treating psychologist with dozens of contacts across settings over a one-off independent assessor.
Follow your profession's record rules, because no NDIS-specific retention rule replaces them. For psychologists that means keeping records at least 7 years after the last occasion of service for adults, and for minors until age 25 or 7 years after last service, whichever is longer, under Psychology Board expectations, APS guidance and state health records law; some state regimes and policies run to 10 years. The Psychology Board's code of conduct in force since 1 December 2025 makes record-keeping an enforceable conduct standard.
No. The report is evidence; the funding decision belongs to the NDIA delegate under s 34, and the reasonable and necessary criteria decide it. Strong functional evidence still moves outcomes: in McCutcheon [2015] AATA 624 the Tribunal rejected the NDIA's insufficient-evidence position because the reports showed the support was maintaining function, and in 2024-25 about 45% of substantive tribunal decisions varied or set aside the NDIA position. Write the report so a delegate can say yes and a tribunal can see why.
Yes. Give it the plan goals, your session notes and outcome measure scores, and it drafts the report with the baseline restated, progress measured goal by goal, unmet goals explained, and recommendations argued against the reasonable and necessary criteria, ready for your clinical review. It can also convert the same material into a plain-language summary for the participant. BastionGPT is HIPAA-compliant with a signed BAA on every plan, and your data is never used to train models.
Educational content, not legal or billing advice. Sample notes are fictional. Follow your organization's policies and your board, payer, and jurisdiction requirements.