7 Questions to Ask Your Allied Health Team
Before You Become the Unpaid Coordinator Yourself

The moment you realise you’ve become the care coordinator is rarely dramatic. You’re on the phone to the physiotherapist’s reception, explaining — for the third time this month — that yes, you are still the same person managing appointments for your father since his stroke. No, you still haven’t heard back from the hand therapist. And yes, you would love to know whether the occupational therapist has written anything new.

You hang up. You add another line to the ruled-paper notebook on the kitchen bench. It is 9:47am on a Tuesday and you have not yet done your own paid work.  

This is the unpaid coordinator shift. For 1 in 8 Australians who are currently in a caring role, and particularly for the thousands caring for someone with multiple allied health providers – a physiotherapist, occupational therapist, exercise physiologist, psychologist, speech pathologist, podiatrist, dietitian – it is invisible, time-consuming work that nobody trained you for.  

The good news: a lot of it can be pre-empted by asking the right questions early. Below are seven questions I wish more carers asked each allied health provider at the first appointment – or, if you are already deep in a team, at the next review. They won’t make the work disappear, but they will shift some of it back to where it belongs, and they will give you the language to request what’s missing.

1. “Who is coordinating the overall plan?”

The first and most important question. You’d be surprised how often the honest answer is “nobody” – or more specifically, “the patient, or whoever is with them”.  

In the Australian system, coordination is often assumed to be the GP’s job, especially under Medicare’s Chronic Disease Management items. For NDIS participants, a Support Coordinator may fill this role. For patients on a Team Care Arrangement, the GP is the named coordinator on paper. In practice, coordination between the allied health providers themselves often falls through the gaps.

• Listen for: a named person (GP, support coordinator, senior therapist) and a realistic statement of what they actually do. “Dr X writes the care plan” is not the same as “Dr X speaks to each of us quarterly”.
• If the answer is unclear: ask the provider who they would call if something urgent came up between sessions. That is your functional coordinator, whether or not anyone has written it down.

2. “What are your goals for this treatment, and how do they fit with what the other providers are working on?”

Allied health professionals tend to write good goals for their own discipline – range of motion, balance, articulation, mood, diet. They are much less likely, unprompted, to reference what the other providers on the team are working towards.  

The risk is that you end up with five well-written plans that quietly contradict one another. A common example: the physiotherapist is working on mobility while the occupational therapist is working on energy conservation for fatigue. Both are correct. Neither will work well if the patient doesn’t understand how to reconcile them.

• Listen for: an answer that mentions at least one other provider by discipline. “My goal is to get her walking independently, which should help with the kitchen tasks the OT is working on” is gold.
• If the answer doesn’t reference the rest of the team: ask the provider whether they have seen the goals or notes from the others. If not, that’s a signal there’s no shared record – which leads us to question 5.

3. “How do you communicate with the other providers on this team, and under what circumstances?”

This is the question most carers never ask, because we assume the answer is “obviously we talk to each other”. Often, we don’t.  

Most allied health professionals in Australia work in independent private practice. Their practice management software (Cliniko, Halaxy, Nookal, PowerDiary) is designed for their own notes, billing, and scheduling – not for sharing with a psychologist down the road using a different system. Letters between providers still exist, but they are usually a one-off at the start of treatment, not an ongoing conversation.

• Listen for: specifics. “I send the GP a report after the initial assessment and another at discharge” is common and honest. “I’ll call the psychologist if I notice signs of low mood” is excellent. “We all email each other” is vague – follow up on how often.
• Follow-up question: “Can you give me an example from the last week?”

4. “What would make you pick up the phone to another provider on the team?”

Coordination often fails not because providers are unwilling, but because there’s no agreed threshold for when it should happen. Asking this question establishes one.  

For a post-stroke patient: a new swallowing issue, a fall, a change in mood, a medication change. For a child on an NDIS plan: a regression in a skill another therapist is also working on. For a chronic pain patient: a flare, a new diagnosis, a surgery.

• Listen for: a provider who can name two or three concrete triggers. This tells you they have thought about it.
• If the answer is “you (the carer) would let me know”: fair enough, but it means you are still the integration layer. Keep a short list on your phone of the triggers each provider told you about – when one happens, it’s easier for you to ping the right people.

5. “What notes do you share, who can see them, and how do I get access?”

This is the transparency question. You have a right to know what is being written about your loved one, who else can read it, and how to get a copy.  

Some providers will share notes on request (particularly for TCA or NDIS patients). Some will share a summary rather than the full record. A growing number of allied health professionals now offer patient-facing care coordination tools – a shared digital record the patient owns, invites providers into, and can revoke access to at any time – which makes this question straightforward.

• Listen for: a clear, confident answer about what is shared and how you get it. “I’ll email you a copy of my assessment within a week” is good. “You can always ask for a copy” is fine but puts the work on you.
• If you want to push further: ask whether the provider would contribute notes to a shared record that the patient owns. Many will say yes if someone else sets it up – which is an opening, not a roadblock.

6. “When something changes – a flare, a discharge from hospital, a new diagnosis – how does that flow through to the rest of the team?”

Change management is where fragmented systems break hardest. A good example: your loved one comes home from a two-week hospital admission. The hospital has its own notes. The GP gets a discharge summary. The physiotherapist and speech pathologist who were seeing your loved one before the admission often get nothing, unless someone – usually you – tells them.

• Listen for: a process the provider can describe. “I’d want to know within a week, either from the patient or from the hospital team” is realistic. “I’d expect to hear from the GP” is common but optimistic.
• What you can do: after any significant change, send a two-line email to every provider on the team. Keep a draft in your phone that you can reuse. The providers will appreciate it, and it costs you two minutes each time instead of three appointments of retrospective catch-up.

7. “What do you need from me to do your job better?”

The question that flips the dynamic. You have been quietly shouldering a lot of this work. This question gives the provider permission to tell you what would make the biggest difference.  

The answers vary widely. A physiotherapist might ask you to keep a short log of home exercises actually completed. A psychologist might ask you to mention any medication changes at the start of each session. A speech pathologist might ask you to record a short video of eating during the week, not just at their clinic.

• Listen for: a concrete request. If the provider says “just keep doing what you’re doing”, that’s a polite non-answer – they haven’t thought about it. Ask the question again at the next review; they’ll have had time to think.

A final word

Each allied health provider on your loved one’s team does important work. But they were trained in their discipline, not in coordinating four other disciplines who happen to share a patient with them. That coordination has historically been outsourced – informally, silently – to carers.  

These seven questions will not make the work disappear. They will, over time, shift the default from “the carer is the integration layer” to “we are a team, and here is how we work together”. It also gives you the vocabulary to escalate – to your loved one’s GP, your support coordinator, your local Carer Gateway service – when coordination isn’t happening and it needs to.  

You’re doing the work anyway. You might as well do it on your terms.