A GP writes an allied-health referral for a patient managing Type 2 diabetes. The referral lands at your podiatry clinic by fax on a Tuesday morning. By Friday, the patient still has not called to book. By the following week, the letter is buried under newer faxes. Three months later, the patient turns up to their next diabetes review and their GP asks why they never saw the podiatrist.

This story is not unique to podiatry. It plays out every week at physiotherapy clinics, dietetics practices, exercise physiology studios and psychology offices across Australia. The referral arrives, the patient does not follow through, and nobody at the receiving practice realises until it is too late to do anything about it.

The mechanics of inbound allied-health referral management are different from specialist practice in some ways, but the core problem is identical: referrals arrive through mixed channels, tracking is informal, and the gap between “referral received” and “appointment booked” is where patients disappear.

The two main referral pathways for allied health

Understanding where referrals come from shapes how you manage them when they arrive.

The GP Chronic Condition Management Plan (GPCCMP). From 1 July 2025, the former GP Management Plan and Team Care Arrangements (TCA) were replaced by a single GP Chronic Condition Management Plan, or GPCCMP. Under this pathway, patients with chronic conditions are referred by their GP to allied-health providers including physiotherapists, podiatrists, dietitians, exercise physiologists, occupational therapists and others. Patients can access a capped number of subsidised allied-health services per calendar year, shared across all providers involved in their care. That cap makes visit-count tracking important: both the patient and the practice benefit from knowing how many subsidised visits remain.

For readers who still encounter the older terminology: the GPCCMP replaces what was previously called the TCA. If you see TCA on older referral letters, it refers to the same general pathway now administered under the GPCCMP framework.

The Mental Health Treatment Plan (MHTP) under Better Access. For psychology and mental health-focused allied-health services, the referral pathway is the Mental Health Treatment Plan, or MHTP. This is unchanged. A GP assesses the patient, prepares a treatment plan, and refers them to a registered psychologist or other eligible mental health provider. Sessions are capped and the Medicare rebate structure applies. The MHTP is a separate pathway from the GPCCMP.

Private and insurer referrals. Not all allied-health referrals are Medicare-funded. Private patients, WorkCover claims, TAC referrals and private health fund arrangements all produce inbound referrals at allied-health practices. These do not carry the same Medicare rules, but they still need to be tracked from arrival to appointment.

How referrals actually arrive

Whether the referral is for a GPCCMP allied-health service, an MHTP psychology referral, or a private arrangement, the referral rarely arrives in a tidy, tracked format.

At most allied-health practices, inbound referrals arrive by some combination of fax, email attachment, patient-carried letter, or uploaded document. Some practices get referrals via the patient’s phone call where the patient mentions their GP said to ring. That last one is especially hard to track because there is no document to file.

From the moment the referral arrives, the receiving practice is responsible for the next step. The GP has done their job. Whether the patient ever gets seen is now largely a function of how well your practice follows up.

Why allied-health practices lose referred patients

The referral leakage problem applies at least as much to allied health as it does to specialist practice. In some ways it is worse, because allied-health appointments tend to feel less urgent to patients than specialist consultations.

Patients do not understand they need to call. A GP says “I am going to refer you to a physio.” The patient assumes the physio will contact them. The fax arrives at your clinic and you wait for the patient to book. Nobody calls. The referral sits.

Low perceived urgency. A patient referred for a suspicious lesion or a chest symptom is motivated to act quickly. A patient referred for chronic back pain or general dietary advice often feels like they can get around to booking next week, and next week never comes.

No-shows after booking. Some patients book and then do not attend, particularly first appointments. Without a reminder workflow in place, this is hard to prevent.

Visit limits are not tracked. Under the GPCCMP, a patient who has already used their capped subsidised visits elsewhere may arrive at your practice unaware the subsidy is exhausted. If nobody tracks this at the referral stage, the surprise falls on the patient at the desk.

Referrals arrive and pile up. A busy clinic with multiple practitioners and multiple referral channels can lose track of what has been received versus what has been followed up, especially when each practitioner manages their own queue informally.

What good referral management looks like for allied health

The fix is not complicated, but it does require a consistent process applied to every inbound referral from the moment it arrives.

One place for every referral. Whether it comes by fax, email or patient letter, every referral should land in a single tracked queue. No more “I think that one came in last week and Sarah might have looked at it.”

Contact the patient quickly. The first contact within 48 hours of a referral arriving makes a significant difference to whether the patient books. A short SMS or phone call, “We have received your referral from Dr [name]. Here is how to book your first appointment,” is enough. Patients who feel contacted promptly are more likely to follow through.

Track visit counts for GPCCMP referrals. Under the GPCCMP, knowing where the patient is in their capped annual allocation matters. Capturing this at intake means your practitioners know before the session, not at the desk when it is awkward.

Automated reminders. For patients who have received the initial contact but have not yet booked, a follow-up reminder three to five days later recovers a meaningful proportion of them. For booked patients, an appointment reminder reduces no-shows.

Conversion visibility. How many referrals did you receive last month versus how many became booked appointments? That number is your conversion rate, and it is the most important operational metric in the practice. Without it, leakage is invisible.

SimpleRef for allied health practices

SimpleRef is built for practices that receive inbound patient referrals, which describes every allied-health clinic in Australia. The board view gives you every referral in a single place, regardless of pathway or channel. Automated SMS and email go to the patient as soon as the referral is logged. You can track visit counts alongside the referral record, and the analytics dashboard shows you the booked-versus-received gap across any date range.

The system does not care whether the referral is a GPCCMP chronic-condition referral, an MHTP psychology referral, or a private arrangement. Every referral that arrives at your practice gets tracked through to a booked appointment, or flagged when it stalls.

For discipline-specific detail on how this applies to your practice type, read the posts below.

By discipline:

Physiotherapy practices managing GPCCMP and private referral volumes: Referral Management for Physiotherapy Clinics

Psychology practices managing Mental Health Treatment Plan referrals and the drop-off between referral and first session: Referral Management for Psychology Practices

Podiatry and dietetics clinics tracking GPCCMP visit limits and chronic-condition referral clusters: Referral Management for Podiatry and Dietetics Clinics

Related reading:

For a deeper look at why patients who are referred never actually show up: Referral Leakage: Why Half Your Referrals Never Become Appointments

For the full feature set: SimpleRef features for allied health and specialist practices

The bottom line

Allied-health practices receive inbound referrals through fragmented channels, from patients carrying letters to faxes arriving while the front desk is managing three other things. The GPCCMP and MHTP pathways add tracking complexity that a spreadsheet or sticky note system cannot reliably handle.

The practices that manage this well share one habit: they treat every inbound referral as a tracked item with a defined next action, and they measure how many of those referrals actually become appointments. That visibility is what closes the leakage gap.

If you want to see what that looks like in practice, start a free trial or explore the full feature set.

Referral Management for Allied Health Practices