Making autism assessments more accessible and affordable

Health

9 Apr

Designing a more efficient, coordinated assessment model that reduces costs and improves the experience for families and clinicians.

Impact:

Reduced the cost of autism assessments from over $5,000 to around $500 through a new co-funded service model
Designed a more coordinated and efficient assessment process, improving the experience for families and clinicians
Enabled a viable pathway to launch, with a clear service, business model, and implementation roadmap

Timeframe: 4 weeks

Services provided:

Strategy
- Business model strategies
Research:

Qualitative ethnographic research
Current-state research

Design:

Service design
Journey mapping
Service blueprinting
Implementation and delivery

Deliverables:

Service blueprint – visualised the end-to-end service model, aligning stakeholders and enabling practical implementation
Business model – established a co-funded approach to reduce costs while maintaining sustainability
Implementation roadmap – provided a clear pathway to test and scale the service

Context:

Access to autism assessments remains a significant challenge, with long wait times and high private costs creating barriers for many families.

A community health organisation in Melbourne recognised the need to improve access to autism assessments, as families were facing wait times of up to 12 months in the public system or paying upwards of $5,000 for private assessments. These barriers meant many families were unable to access timely diagnosis and support.

The organisation had an initial idea to address this gap but lacked a clear model for how the service would work in practice, or how it could be delivered sustainably.

WAVE was engaged to design an autism assessment service that could reduce wait times and costs, while maintaining high standards of care and attracting experienced allied health professionals.

Approach:

We began by building a deep understanding of the current assessment experience for both families and clinicians. Families often experienced fragmented, slow, and costly journeys, while clinicians faced challenges coordinating across disciplines and delivering assessments efficiently.

To address this, we engaged parents and guardians who had recently gone through the assessment process through a series of co-design workshops. These sessions helped us understand their frustrations and priorities, and identify opportunities to simplify and improve the experience. We used these insights to shape a more streamlined and supportive assessment journey.

In parallel, we worked closely with a range of allied health professionals, including paediatricians, speech pathologists, and occupational therapists. Through co-design workshops, we explored how assessments were delivered in practice and identified opportunities to improve coordination between disciplines. This enabled us to design a model that reduced duplication, improved information flow, and supported clinicians to work more efficiently.

We also partnered with Victoria’s autism peak body, who contributed to the co-design process, endorsed the model, and validated that it addressed key gaps in the current system.

Bringing these perspectives together, we developed a detailed service model that mapped the end-to-end experience for families and clinicians. The service blueprint became a critical tool to communicate how the model would work in practice, helping stakeholders align around a shared vision.

To ensure the service could be sustained, we designed a business model that combined government block funding, surplus revenue from other parts of the organisation, and co-payments from families. This approach significantly reduced out-of-pocket costs while maintaining financial viability.

Finally, we developed an implementation roadmap to support the organisation to test the model through a pilot and scale it over time.

Outcome:

We delivered a clear and practical model for a more accessible and coordinated autism assessment service.

By redesigning both the service and business model, we reduced the cost of assessments from over $5,000 to around $500, removing a major barrier for families seeking support. The new model also improved the flow of information and coordination between clinicians, creating a more efficient and consistent experience.

The service blueprint played a key role in aligning stakeholders, helping the organisation clearly understand how the service would operate and what was required to deliver it.

The model was endorsed and validated by Victoria’s autism peak body, providing confidence that it addressed real system-level gaps and unmet needs.

With a clear service design, financial model, and implementation pathway in place, the organisation was able to move forward with a small-scale trial, laying the foundation for a sustainable service that could improve access to autism assessments across the community.