Another referral. Another name on the waitlist. Another urgent conversation about hiring another therapist for the team.
Sound familiar?
If you're working in an allied health clinic right now, chances are your team is already stretched thin.
With the demand for NDIS services increasing and workforce shortages across Australia (especially in regional and remote areas), clinics are under enormous pressure.
The Theratrak team have spoken to clinical teams who are juggling waitlists from 10 participants to over 1,000 participants! That’s a lot of families waiting for support.
And the default response from clinics that we often hear is:
“We just need to hire more staff.”
But here’s the uncomfortable truth:
You can’t hire your way out of a broken workflow.
More therapists won’t fix outdated systems. They’ll just give you more people stuck in the same bottleneck.
Because burnout isn’t just caused by big caseloads - it’s also caused by bad processes.
One study shared that 43% of NDIS allied health professionals and disability support people said they feel burnt out at least half the time - and admin is one of the biggest contributors.
Before you post another job ad, it’s worth asking:
What if the clinical process is the problem - not the size of the therapy team?
Let’s Compare Two Very Different Clinics 👀
Meet our two fictional clinics - both passionate, busy, and trying to help as many families as possible.
But their approaches to supporting participants? Couldn’t be more different.
Clinic A: The “Hope & Hustle Allied Health” Approach 🏥
Every time the waitlist grows, this clinic hires someone new.
The team’s full of great people and dedicated therapists, but the admin never slows down.
Everyone’s managing their own documents, sending therapy notes or PDFs via email, and most therapists end up rewriting the same programs over and over.
New hires take months to onboard, only to inherit the same chaotic system.
Reports pile up. Emails go unanswered.
Burnout creeps in, and turnover stays high.
Does this sound dramatic? Maybe. But also… familiar?
Clinic B: The “Smarter Moves Therapy” Approach 💻
This team had the same problem with a rapidly growing waitlist - until they paused hiring and streamlined their systems instead.
They adopted Theratrak at their clinic and implemented it across their entire clinical team to reduce admin and support clients in new ways.
Now, each of their therapists saves at least 2 hours per week on admin with more streamlined workflows and better tracking of their repeatable tasks.
Therapists use Theratrak to send home programs, track progress, and even support waitlisted families asynchronously.
Their team feels more in control. Their clients stay more engaged.
The clinical team is scaling - hiring more clinicians and supporting more participants - sustainably.
Same people. Better system. Less stress.
Hiring Isn’t Always a Fix - Sometimes It’s Just a Delay ⌛
When we throw more staff at the problem, allied health clinics can often accidentally create new problems, such as:
More time spent on onboarding
More supervision needed for new staff
More payroll costs
Still more admin to be done
But when clinics fix the workflows and process from the top down?
Therapists feel supported
Admin becomes more manageable
Capacity increases - without increasing headcount
It’s not about therapists doing more. It’s about doing things better.
Working Smarter, Not Harder 🧠
Your next hire might help. But if your system is already stretched, they’ll be running uphill from day one.
Because burnout isn’t an individual therapist problem. It’s a system problem.
And fixing a culture of burnout? It starts with the way you work.
How could you create more capacity with the allied health team you already have?
Try Theratrak free for 30 days and see what a smarter workflow feels like.
Or start by checking how much time your clinic could be saving each week.
