Does "X Hours per Year" in an NDIS Plan mean Therapy Hours or Funding Value?
A plan was recently issued to a participant. In the cover email, the NDIA states, for example, that Exercise Physiology funded "X hours per year".
The total funding amount appears to have been calculated by multiplying the applicable hourly rate by X hours. In practice, however, the Exercise Physiologist charges not only for the face-to-face session time, but also for travel. For example, a one-hour session may attract an additional 0.5 hours due to travel time.
In these circumstances, does the reference to "X hours per year" represent the number of hours of Exercise Physiology services that the participant can actually receive, or does it simply represent the value of funding available to be paid to the provider?
If provider travel is claimable from the same funding allocation, it would appear that the participant may receive fewer than X hours of Exercise Physiology services over the course of the year, as part of the funding would be consumed by travel charges rather than direct therapy time.