How to get NDIS referrals from hospitals

Hospital teams discharge NDIS participants every week and need providers who can actually start. Here is the method that gets you on their list and keeps you there.

Why hospitals need providers like you

Right now, in almost every large hospital in Australia, there are patients who are medically ready to go home but cannot leave. Their treatment is finished. The bed is needed. What is missing is the NDIS support that makes discharge safe: a support worker roster, an accommodation vacancy, community access, sometimes just a provider willing to say yes this week.

Hospitals measure this problem. In NSW, the Patient Flow Portal logs non-clinical delays under a category called Waiting for What, or W4W, and NDIS is one of the named delay reasons. Other states run their own equivalents. Every day a discharge-ready patient stays in a bed, that delay is being counted and reported upwards.

The NDIA feels the pressure from the other side. It stations Health Liaison Officers around public hospitals, uses discharge delegates who focus on hospital cases, and has made public commitments to contact newly referred hospital patients within four days and to aim to have discharge-ready participants out of hospital within 30 days of being ready. All of that machinery exists to move patients out. What it cannot do is deliver the supports. That part needs providers. That part is you.

Why brochure drops fail

The default move for a new provider is a brochure drop. Print a flyer, leave a stack at reception, wait for the phone to ring. It almost never rings. Social work departments receive brochures constantly, and a brochure cannot answer the only question that matters on discharge day, which is whether you can genuinely start this week for this person in this suburb.

A discharge is a social worker's professional responsibility. If the supports fall over, the patient bounces back and the failure lands on their desk. So they refer through trust, and trust attaches to a person, not to paper. The whole method below exists to make your representative that person.

Map a patch, not a state

Pick a small set of hospitals you can genuinely service, inside the area your workers can reliably reach. Learn each one: where the social work department sits, which wards discharge the most NDIS participants, who plans discharges for rehabilitation and aged care. Depth beats breadth. One hospital where the team knows your rep by name will outperform twenty that received a flyer.

Phone ahead and book ten minutes

Never walk in cold. Ring the social work department, introduce yourself, and ask for ten minutes at a time that suits them. The framing matters. You are not selling anything. You are a local provider with current capacity who wants to be a useful option when they are planning discharges. Ten minutes is a promise, so keep it.

The ten-minute appointment

Arrive on time and be brief. Bring a one-page capability summary: the services you deliver, the suburbs you cover, the funding types you can accept, realistic start timeframes, and the direct mobile number of your rep. Hand it over, give a two-minute version out loud, then stop talking and ask the two golden questions.

The two golden questions

First: what kinds of discharges are hardest for you to place right now? This tells you where the unmet need is, and the answer is often unglamorous. Complex behaviour, short-notice starts, outer suburbs, weekend coverage. That gap is your opening.

Second: what do you need from a provider before you would feel comfortable including them as an option? This invites the social worker to tell you exactly how to earn a place on their list. Whatever they name, insurance certificates, worker screening, a service agreement template, an intake contact, you go away and produce it.

Follow up the same evening

That evening, send a short email. Thank them, restate what you heard in the meeting, attach the one-pager, and confirm the specific things they asked about. Same evening, not next week. Responsiveness under time pressure is the exact quality they need in a discharge provider, and this is your first chance to demonstrate it rather than claim it.

Hold a monthly cadence

Then keep showing up. One useful contact per month per hospital is enough: a current capacity update, a note when you add a service or a suburb, a brief call to check what they are struggling to place. Useful, brief, consistent. The goal is simple. When a discharge lands that matches what you do, your rep's name should come to mind before the folder is even open.

What timelines to expect

Not week one. Social workers watch a new provider for a while before trusting them with a discharge, and that is reasonable. Across providers who do this consistently, referrals typically start in months two to four of outreach. The first referral is often the hard-to-place one nobody else would take. Do it well and it becomes the second and the third.

Once a referral starts moving, it can move quickly, because the NDIA's four-day contact and 30-day discharge commitments push hospital cases along. Have your intake process ready before the call comes, not after.

The conduct rules that keep you welcome

Hospitals are careful environments, and one misstep can end a relationship that took months to build. The rules are not complicated.

• No gifts to hospital staff. Not hampers, not chocolates, not even a coffee. Staff cannot accept them, and offering puts them in an awkward position.
• Visit by appointment only, and never approach patients or families on wards or in waiting areas. Every conversation goes through staff.
• Respect participant choice. Hospital staff cannot recommend individual providers; they hand families a list of options. Your job is to be on that list and to be the easiest option to say yes to, never to ask staff to steer work your way.
• Be straight about registration. If you are unregistered, say so plainly. You can support plan-managed and self-managed participants, and that covers a large share of discharges.

These rules are not obstacles. They are a filter, and the providers who respect them without being asked are the ones who stay welcome.

Or start free: the hospital outreach starter checklist.