What commissioned support coordination in 2028 means for your business

The Government has announced that from 1 July 2028, support coordination will be delivered through a new commissioned NDIS support coordination and connection service. It will replace the way participants receive support coordination today.

Of all the reforms in the current package, this is the one that keeps me up at night. Not because I think support coordination should stay as it is, but because the design choices made in the next eighteen months will decide which providers are still in this market in 2029.

Here is how I am thinking about it, as someone who runs a support coordination book alongside other NDIS services.

What "commissioned" actually means

Today, participants with support coordination in their plan choose any provider they like. The money follows the participant, and providers compete for them one by one.

Commissioning flips that. The Government decides what the service should do, sets the standard and then selects providers to deliver it, often by region, cohort or contract. Instead of winning participants, you win a commission.

The Department and the NDIA released early design ideas and ran a consultation, which closed on 2 October 2026, on what the service should do and how providers should be commissioned. The detail is not settled. That is exactly why providers need to be paying attention now.

Why the Government is doing this

The stated reasons are consistency, quality, safeguarding and clearer roles between providers. Those are fair concerns.

The NDIS Commission's recent campaign on support coordination found that most providers delivered other services as well as support coordination, and that many lacked clarity on how to apply their conflict of interest policies in practice. Sector analysis has estimated that around half of participants with support coordination buy it from an organisation that also provides them with other supports.

That is the heart of it. When the person helping you choose your providers works for one of those providers, the risk of a closed loop is real, however good your intentions.

The conflict of interest question

The NDIS Independent Advisory Council has previously recommended that the NDIA enforce a separation between support coordination and other supports for the same participant. If commissioning adopts that principle, a provider may be able to coordinate a participant's plan or deliver their supports, but not both.

The word I keep hearing in the sector is that this could apply even to registered providers with strong conflict of interest controls. Until the final design is published, nobody can say for certain. But I would plan as if it will. Registration for support coordination has also been paused ahead of commissioning, which tells you the current model is not where the Government sees the future.

For a provider like mine, that is a genuine strategic fork in the road.

The three paths

As I see it, a provider that delivers support coordination today has three broad options.

1. Become a support coordination specialist. Commit to coordination, drop or separate other services and compete hard for the commission. This suits providers with deep coordination expertise and strong outcomes data. The risk is that if you do not win a commission, you have no book at all.

2. Exit support coordination and focus on services. Let coordination go and build your direct supports, such as SIL, community access or respite. This trades a dependable referral channel for independence from the commissioning outcome.

3. Structurally separate. Run coordination and services as genuinely independent entities, with separate governance, staff, systems and data. This keeps options open but is costly, and it only works if the final rules accept structural separation as enough.

There is no universally right answer. The right path depends on your margins, your people, your participants and your appetite for risk.

What I would do in the next twelve months

1. Know your numbers. Separate the revenue and margin of your coordination book from your services. Many providers find coordination earns less revenue but a better margin than they expected. You need to know what you would be giving up.
2. Map your referral dependency. How many of your service participants first came to you through your own coordinators? If coordination disappears, how much of your services pipeline goes with it?
3. Build outcomes evidence. Commissioning will reward providers who can prove quality. Start measuring plan utilisation, goal progress, participant satisfaction and time to connect supports now.
4. Tighten conflict of interest practice today. Separate systems and access, document every referral, and make participant choice visible in your records. Good practice now is both the right thing and the best preparation.
5. Stay in the conversation. The first consultation closed on 2 October 2026. Watch for the outcome and respond to the next round. Providers who actually run coordination need to be in that conversation, not reading about the outcome afterwards.
6. Talk to your coordinators. They are worried about their jobs. Be honest about what you know and what you do not.

My view

I welcome a stronger, more consistent support coordination service. Participants deserve independent advice, and the sector has not always delivered it.

My concern is that commissioning could remove the small, community rooted coordinators who know their participants best, in favour of large contracts that look efficient on paper. Choice and control is a founding principle of the NDIS. Whatever the final model looks like, it should keep that principle at its centre.

For providers, the message is simple. July 2028 is closer than it sounds. The decisions you make in 2026 will shape where you stand when it arrives.