From admin overload to participant impact: Heidi at Access Your Supports

Background

Access Your Supports (AYS) is a Victorian NDIS provider that has been helping participants reach their disability-related goals for over 10 years. Based in Geelong, AYS services participants across the state, from Melbourne and Frankston to Colac and Mildura, and has supported thousands of individuals through plan management, support coordination, support work, peer mentoring, employment support, and a range of allied health therapies.

When AYS began exploring AI tools for their therapy team, the goal was clear: reduce the administrative burden so clinicians could get back to what they do best, spending time with participants.

Challenges

For AYS's allied health team, the work that mattered most, being present with participants, was constantly competing with the work that drained them most: documentation.

Case notes that snowballed

Before Heidi, case noting was entirely manual. Therapists had to find time after sessions to sit down, recall what was discussed, type everything up, check for errors, and upload notes through the system. If a clinician had back-to-back sessions or spent two days on the road in Mildura with 12 appointments, the next day was essentially a write-off, consumed entirely by catching up on case notes.

"We would flag if it wasn't completed within 48 hours, we'd send in a million reminder emails to the team leads and we'd have to go and investigate and find out why it wasn't done." - Alex Jolley

Supervision admin that added up fast

With a behaviour support team of 18 practitioners, supervision sessions ran roughly five to six times per fortnight, each about an hour long, and the documentation didn't end when the conversation did.

"A significant amount of time was not used for spending time with participants or any billable work. It was just almost mind-numbing work that we were doing for quite some time, frankly." - Alex Jolley

Billable time under pressure

All of this non-billable admin had a direct impact on KPIs. Some staff were struggling to meet their fortnightly billing targets, not because they weren't working hard, but because so much of their time was consumed by documentation that couldn't be billed. And when back-to-back sessions stacked up, the snowball effect was real.

"If we had, say, two days in Mildura and came back with 12 sessions across the two days. You're almost right off your next day just catching up on case notes. So it's a lot of work, a lot of work." - Alex Jolley

Solution

AYS evaluated a range of AI tools that had entered the market, but ultimately chose Heidi, drawn by the quality of the product, the responsiveness of the team, and the credibility that came with the platform's established use in healthcare settings like GP clinics.

"I knew that if the GP is using this, the encryption and data collection must be pretty sound. Otherwise, it wouldn't work." - Alex Jolley

What set Heidi apart wasn't just transcription. It was how naturally it fit into the varied, often unpredictable rhythms of allied health work.

Alex, who works across behaviour support and psychology with a cohort of children and teens, rarely transcribes sessions live. He stays present, using his notebook, reflecting participants' language, keeping the therapeutic relationship front and centre. Then, in the gaps between sessions, he talks to Heidi.

"I use it when I drive. I use it when I go and pick up my son from school. So I've got a 15-minute window from work to go and pick him up. That's enough for two case notes in that time." - Alex Jolley

The team also discovered Heidi's value well beyond case notes. Alex built custom templates to replace clunky Microsoft Word forms, turning team meetings and supervisions into natural conversations while Heidi captured everything in the background. Other team members began using it for drafting emails to parents, writing letters, and documenting phone calls. Across the broader team, including early intervention and occupational therapy, Heidi adapted to different clinical settings and ways of working.

"Any chance I can to avoid a manual case note, I'll take." - Alex Jolley

AYS's favourite Heidi features:

• Dictation after sessions: Clinicians talk through what happened in their own words, and Heidi turns it into polished, professional case notes, even filtering out frustration or emotional language.
• Custom templates: Old Microsoft Word templates replaced with conversational prompts that capture structured information naturally.
• Multi-setting flexibility: Used on computers, tablets, and phones. In clinic, at home visits, in the car, and on the go.
• Professional tone adjustment: Notes come back succinct and clinical, regardless of how casually they were dictated.

Impact

Heidi didn't just save time at AYS. It changed the shape of the working day, and what became possible within it.

"It's actually increased the time I can spend with participants to increase my billable time. It's made my billable time more efficient because I can add in extra sessions with clients as well." - Alex Jolley

Key outcomes:

• 2-3 hours of daily admin reduced, with six case notes completed in a single hour using Heidi
• KPI targets consistently met: since adopting Heidi, very few staff have fallen below their fortnightly billing benchmarks
• Caseloads expanded from approximately 30 to 35 participants per clinician
• Waitlist pressure eased, with practitioners now having more capacity to bring on new participants

The end of "KPI stress"

"Utilising Heidi allows us to optimise some of those processes that may not be supporting us to meet the KPI and moving that back into energy where we can support more participants at a higher level." - Alex Jolley

Before Heidi, some staff regularly struggled to meet billing targets. Since the rollout, that's shifted dramatically. Practitioners are spending less time on admin and more time with participants, and the numbers reflect it.

Smarter, not just faster

One of the unexpected benefits was how Heidi elevated the quality of documentation. Alex noticed that Heidi would name therapeutic techniques and frameworks that clinicians were applying instinctively but not articulating in their notes.

"A game of Uno with a young eight-year-old kid, we have the intention of helping develop their acceptance of loss, turn-taking, a whole range of things. Heidi will often give me that name. It puts a name to the work that we just do naturally." - Alex Jolley

This didn't just improve documentation. It helped therapists see and articulate the therapeutic value in their everyday practice.

The CEO's question, answered

When AYS first explored Heidi, their CEO raised a reasonable concern: if it saves so much time, won't that mean a reduction in billable hours? The opposite proved true.

"Now we know it wasn't the case at all. It was the opposite." - Michael Menchise, Business Development Manager

By converting unbilled admin time into freed-up capacity, practitioners were able to see more participants, service more of the waitlist, and deliver higher-quality, more present care.

What's next

AYS sees Heidi as foundational, not just for case noting, but for how the organisation operates. With reports, letters, and broader documentation workflows still largely untapped, there's significant room to grow.

"There will be so much more within that programme that I feel could really help benefit us even further." - Alex Jolley

Michael is particularly excited about Heidi's product roadmap, including upcoming tools like Heidi Evidence, and what they could mean for elevating AYS's standard of service.

"I think with Heidi under our belt, we're more professional as practitioners. And then if we had something like that, it would just again elevate us to being one of the best service providers in town." - Michael Menchise

For any NDIS provider weighing up the investment, Michael's message is simple:

"If you're an NDIS provider and you're reading or listening to this, it'd be well worth your time looking into Heidi, especially if you offer allied health, because it's certainly a game-changer." - Michael Menchise