You are allowed to change
Under the NDIS, the participant chooses the provider. You can change providers, and you do not need your current provider’s permission or approval to do it. You do not owe anyone an explanation.
Providers sometimes imply otherwise. They are wrong.
The four steps
1. Read the service agreement. It will state a notice period — commonly a set number of weeks. That is the notice you owe. It is a contractual term, not a rule of the NDIS.
2. Line up the new provider first. This is the step people skip, and it is the one that matters. Sign the new service agreement, and get a confirmed start date, before you end the old one.
3. Give notice in writing. Email is fine. A short, factual message stating the end date is enough. You do not need to give reasons.
4. Move the information across. Ask for the participant’s support plans, risk assessments, clinical protocols, medication charts and progress notes. This is the participant’s information and you are entitled to it. Handing it to the new provider is what prevents them starting from zero.
If there are clinical supports, plan the changeover
This is where switching genuinely carries risk. A bowel program, a feeding regime, a wound dressing schedule or a tracheostomy protocol cannot have a gap in it while paperwork is being processed.
A high-intensity support also cannot start instantly with a new provider, because the new provider’s workers must be trained and assessed against the participant’s specific clinical plan first, under registered-nurse supervision. That takes time.
So the honest sequence is: new provider assesses, new provider trains its workers, new provider confirms a start date, then notice is given to the old provider with enough runway for the notice period to expire on or after that date. Where possible, overlap the two rather than leaving a gap.
Any provider who tells you they can pick up a complex clinical support tomorrow is either not doing the training or not telling you about it.
If the plan is agency-managed
If the plan is NDIA-managed, the new provider must be NDIS-registered. If it is plan-managed or self-managed, you have more choice, but registration still tells you whether the provider is audited against the NDIS Practice Standards — which for high-intensity clinical supports is the whole question.
What to ask a new provider before you switch
- Which NDIS registration groups do you hold?
- Do you hold Practice Standards Module 1, and which of the seven high-intensity supports do you deliver?
- Who will actually deliver the clinical care — a registered nurse, or a trained support worker under nurse supervision?
- How, and when, will your workers be trained against our plan specifically?
- What is the realistic start date, and what would delay it?
A provider that answers all five plainly is a provider worth switching to. A provider that answers none of them plainly has answered them anyway.