Resources
The admin to sort before your first private client
The clinical side of moving into private practice is the part you are trained for. The administrative side is the part that decides whether the first six months are calm or chaotic, and most of it is much easier to set up before you have a caseload than after.
This is not a business plan. It is the specific list of things that are painful to retrofit.
Before you can bill Medicare
A Medicare provider number for each location you practise from. Not one per practitioner — one per practitioner per site. If you work from two clinics and a telehealth setup, sort that out early, because a claim submitted against the wrong location is a claim you have to chase.
Know which pathway each referral is on. A GP referral under a Chronic Disease Management plan is not the same as a referral under an Eating Disorder Plan, and the difference is five funded sessions versus twenty. We covered the detail in Medicare for dietitians.
The referral must exist before the first service. A referral written afterwards does not make the earlier service claimable. This catches people once and only once.
Before you can bill NDIS
Decide registered or unregistered. It changes who can use you — plan-managed and self-managed participants can see an unregistered provider; NDIA-managed participants cannot.
Write non-face-to-face work into your service agreement. Report writing, mealtime management plans and plan-review preparation are claimable, with the participant’s agreement, and the service agreement is where that agreement belongs. Raising it three months in is an awkward conversation nobody has, which is how the hours get absorbed. See NDIS line items.
The things people wish they had set up first
A consistent note structure from day one. Whatever you use — ADIME or something else — use the same one for every client. Six months of inconsistent notes is not a small cleanup, and it is what makes an audit or a handover genuinely difficult.
Intake before the appointment, not during it. Collecting history, dietary background, goals and funding details ahead of time converts ten minutes of a paid appointment into ten minutes of the client’s evening. It also means you arrive at the first session having already read about them.
Decide how you will handle records and privacy, and write it down. As an APD you are handling health information under the Privacy Act. Where records are stored, who can access them, how long you keep them, and what happens if a client asks for a copy — these need answers before a client asks, not after.
Templates for the letters you will send fifty times. The GP letter, the discharge summary, the handout. Building these once beats rewriting them each Friday evening.
A position on cancellations, and the wording to go with it. Decide the policy, put it in the service agreement, and have the sentence ready. This is the thing new practitioners most consistently avoid and most consistently regret avoiding.
What is worth paying for early
Honestly: not much. Most of the first year can run on a calendar, a notes system and a clear head.
The things that repay early investment are the ones that compound — a note structure you do not have to redo, an intake process that saves ten minutes fifty times, and templates for the documents you send most. Those are hours per month, permanently.
The things that do not repay early investment are anything sized for a practice you do not have yet.
A note on our own position
AI Dietitians does the drafting side of this — intake links, notes, GP letters, handouts, NDIS reports, and the calculators — and a 7-day free trial covers whether it fits how you work.
Worth knowing before you sign up: the trial does not ask for a card, and nothing is charged when it ends. Access pauses until you choose a plan. If you would rather look at something without an account at all, our free tools need no account at all — Medicare items, NDIS line items, IDDSI and malnutrition screening are open to any Australian dietitian, and stay that way.
References
- Services Australia, Provider registration and provider numbers
- MBS Online — referral requirements and item conditions.
- NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, Registering as a provider
- OAIC, Australian Privacy Principles and health information guidance
- Dietitians Australia, Private practice resources
General information for clinicians setting up in practice. It is not legal, financial, tax or business advice. Registration, provider number and claiming requirements change — confirm current requirements with Services Australia, the NDIS Commission and your professional association, and take your own advice on business structure and insurance.