The Practitioner Pulse | June 2026: Ep 94

Welcome to the very first Practitioner Pulse.

Each month, I'll be sharing what I'm seeing, hearing and experiencing from inside the practitioner world right now.

In this June 2026 edition, we're taking a mid-year reality check on the natural health industry.

We'll explore what's happening with private health rebates, the impact of cost-of-living pressures on client behaviour, the growing influence of AI, increasing competition in the online space, and why many practitioners are feeling the squeeze right now.

Most importantly, we'll talk about what to focus on instead of panicking when things feel quieter than expected.

Because understanding what's happening around you is often the first step to making better decisions inside your practice.

In this episode:

• The return of private health rebates and what it means for practitioners
• Why the current market feels different
• How cost-of-living pressures are affecting client decisions
• AI, content creation and the growing noise online
• The importance of differentiation in a crowded market
• Practical ways to strengthen your practice during quieter periods
• The mid-year numbers every practitioner should be reviewing

The Practitioner Pulse will return each month with observations, trends and practical insights from inside the practitioner industry.

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Visit the website www.cassduffill.com

Transcript

Welcome To Practitioner Pulse

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi everybody and welcome to the first episode of our brand new series on the podcast, the Practitioner Pulse. The Practitioner Pulse is a new series that I'm adding into our podcast rotation because every month we're going to be coming on and talking about what is actually happening in the industry and in our natural health practices right now. And every quarter we're going to be coming together live on a live streamed video call to do our Practitioner Pulse live. It's going to be a great opportunity for some QA and some support. So I'm really hoping you love this new direction. I'm really excited about delivering this first one to you. So, friends, what's actually happening in our natural health practice right now, what's happening in the market, it's time for our mid-year 2026, let's call it a reality check. We're going to be talking about some things that have come up in the market, some things that we're experiencing in the economy, and what that's doing to our businesses, what we're experiencing. And I'm also going to be sharing what practitioners are telling me, what they're experiencing, because I want you to start to understand that you're not in a bucket by yourself. So many people are experiencing similar things right now, and we're going to be talking about those. So let's start with the big elephant in the room, and let's start with the market, with what we're seeing in the marketplace itself and some of those changes. Now we know that the natural health, the complementary medicine industry is growing. That recent report, what was it, $4.6 billion annually? There's a huge expenditure. There's a lot of people putting money into their healthcare in natural ways. So there is a lot of opportunity there for all of us. So why are we sitting here and some of you are still struggling for clients? I think some of what we're going to discuss today is going to bring that to light. But where I want to start first is private health rebates. Now, a lot of you are naturopaths, and I know some of you nutritionists, homeopaths, and some other service providers. So private health rebates is not going to be specific to all of you, but I do just want to mention this. So where we're at in 2019, private

Private Health Rebates Come Back

SPEAKER_00 2:22

health rebates for natural and alternative therapies were revoked. They were revoked, which meant that naturopaths, there was bone therapy, there was all sorts of natural alternative therapies, natural medicine that was removed from private health rebates. There's been a lot of work happened between then and now, and something happened called the NTREP review. If you want to look that up, I won't go into that, but that's been the process of getting these reinstated. And where we're at is this. July 1st, 2025, which was almost a year ago, is when private health insurance rebates were reinstated. What that meant was that the government approved that they could be put back into private health funds. They had to change the legislation for that to happen. And that did happen on the 1st of July or around the 1st of July in 2025. That meant that naturopathy, Western herbal medicine have come back into health funds. Now, where we got a little bit of a gray area was the delay because the government made that change, but what happened next was health funds sat on their hands. Health funds aren't going to give away anything for free, are they? So they sat on their hands. They didn't start to reintegrate those natural therapies, even though they were directed to do so by the government. And we've been sitting and waiting. Sitting and waiting. Now, 1st of April every year is when health funds do their revision, and that's when we get our letters every year saying how much our policy is going up, etc. It's also when they make changes. So it only happened in the you know the last few months at the start of this year that health funds thought, oh, we best get our riggon because this has to come into effect soon. Got a few health funds that are back. What have we got? Uh CBHS and anyone with the AHRG funds. So we're still waiting for the big hitters, the Medibank primates, the big guys, where are you? You know, and what have they done? Now we are still waiting on that. We have nothing we can do for that as an industry, as a profession, because we are beholden to the health funds to bring it back. I want to talk to you about how this played out in practice, though. Back in 2019, before we lost health funds, I did a survey of my patients. At that time, I was seeing 30 to 40 clients a week, and approximately 20% from the research of my own patients. 20% of them were using the rebates, and the average person was getting $19 back. That was it. $19 back. What I came to understand from that is a lot of the concerns around the loss of these health fund rebates were probably my own fears, because on the bottom line, they didn't really make a big difference to how much someone was spending and how affordable it was to come and see me. Did it make a difference to my practice? No, it didn't. It didn't at the time. I used to find that people would run out of their health funds around August. They'd have no rebate left, and then they'd stop coming until January when they got the health fund back. When health funds were removed, that changed. They didn't stop coming. They kept coming and would see through their treatment. So that was a really interesting change. So I don't want you to think if you're not getting health funds back that you're missing out, or if you're not eligible for health funds, that you're missing out, because I don't think it actually made a big deal in my practice back then. However, we're in 2026 and right now we are in the cost of living crisis of a generation. We have have never seen anything like this, have we? People are in a tight spot. And this is where things like the health fund rebates are going to come back into play for people that have them. I have seen some reports that people are reducing their health fund, going to private hospital only, or getting rid of it altogether. So it'd be interesting to see how this plays out. What I would say though, in the coming months, you will see the other health funds coming back online for the natural therapies that have been reinstated. They have to. The government has legislated, they have to put us back. So I think in a market where things are a little bit tight, we've got cost of living pressures. I really think it's well worth, if you are eligible, get your high caps back or get your health funds back, get your provider numbers back as they come through. Work with your association, push your association if you have to. Contact your health funds, push them if you have to. Because what I have seen after bringing my practice back, and it's only been back since the 11th of May, I got high caps reinstated back in March before we even had health funds back because I knew it was coming. So I had it there ready to go from day one. And I have to say, vast majority, probably 80% of the people who are calling discovery calls about the practice, are asking if I have high caps and if I have private health. So I think in this market where things are a bit tight, I think that it's something to take some action on if it's something that you are able to have. I would prioritize that now. I think in a tight market, these things can be a really good client acquisition tool or a nice benefit for clients at the at the very least. Now, next I want to talk about something that I call the mid-year revenue gap. This time of year, this June-July period over winter two, this is traditionally a time where things are a little bit quieter in our natural health practices. It has always been this way. I've been in practice since 2013 and it has always been this way. There's a little bit of a downturn. Why does this happen? It happens because we've hit the end of financial year time. People are focused on other things, people are getting their tax done, they're distracted by the end of financial year, they're off buying clothes and sheets and new cars in the end of financial year sales instead of spending money on their health. There's so many other distractions for people right now and reasons for them to delay. If this is what you're going through right now, this is not a sign that your marketing isn't working. It's not a sign that you're not a good practitioner. It's seasonal, it's normal, it does happen. Okay, and it happens every year.

The Mid-Year Revenue Gap

SPEAKER_00 8:40

You've also got over this period we're about to go into school holidays. This period of school holidays was always a little bit of a quieter one in practice, particularly if you're a practice that doesn't treat children. In my practice, I had quite a what's the word, quite a robust pediatric arm of what I did. So I still had a flow of patients, but I have to say, it's school holidays, there was always more cancellations and things like that. So if you're in a quiet window right now, please try not to panic. And don't start to do things like discount or try to knock out a brand new offer. What we have to do instead of panicking is pretty simple and it's being strategic, and I'm going to talk you through that at the end because it actually refers to a few of these things that I want to talk about today. Now, let's talk about the big elephant, the cost of living. Because this honestly is the real client conversation piece right now. Cost of living. Let's just put some numbers on the table. There was a report, I think it was Channel 9 News a couple of weeks ago saying that the cost of groceries are expected to increase by 20% by the end of July. Now that was in line with the war, with fuel, and all of those other things that we're hearing about. So all of those things are going up. We know utilities have gone up. I got my first electricity bill for the new clinic. Now I used to pay about $330, $350 a quarter in my old practice. I got a bill for the first month and it's $331. And then they just sent me another bill yesterday with an $89 amount on it saying, sorry, we miscalculated. Here's an adjustment. So that takes me to what $410, $420 a month when that used to

Cost Of Living Changes Client Behaviour

SPEAKER_00 10:27

cover an entire quarter in the old practice. And let's not forget that most of that bill was actually not working there. We were still setting it up. We weren't in there on weekends, laying flooring, painting walls. So we weren't actively in there eight hours a day. So we can see that that's gone up. We can see the cost of fuel's gone up. We can see that everything has become a lot more expensive, hasn't it? So our clients are stretching their money. It's got to go further. They're being very mindful about where they spend it and why they spend it. We're seeing them right now stretch out the time between appointments. How long can this last? No, I don't want to see you in two weeks. I'd rather come back in four. Now, let's be clear about what's happening here. They're not leaving, they're not ghosting you. It's not that they're not committed to their treatment and the regime that you're setting out. They absolutely probably are. But what they're doing is they're managing their cash flow. So practitioners who are holding clients and gaining clients through this period, they're the practitioners who are offering really clear value, speaking and messaging that's really, really clear. If your client has to work out what you offer and how it's going to help them, you're never going to convert a client in this market. You need to be offering really clear value. You need to be offering structured care in a pathway. No longer is it good enough to go consult to consult, tweak some adjustments in their herbal and give them a couple of new subs and send them on their way. They want to know where they're going and what the results will be after that. So this is a great time to, even if it's a simple bullet points, put on your treatment plan that I'm expecting this is going to take X amount of time to resolve. And these are the phases we're going to work through. And right now we're in phase two and we're working on resolving XYZ. Give them an idea of the journey. That's going to be how you frame the conversation around consultations to keep clients coming back in this market without having to discount. Okay, I know it it feels like the easy one to whip out of the back pocket, doesn't it? I'm going to discount. That will fix everything. It actually won't. The clients that come into you on a discount don't stay when your prices go up. Your $65 client is a very different beast to the $120 client. The clients you get in on a discount aren't going to stay when your prices go up. So bear that in mind. And remember, in this cost of living situation we're in right now, you need to be supporting your client in a way that shows them the journey, how long they have to be there, offer clear value, offer structured care, offer clear pathways, offer flexible options. Now that doesn't mean you have to put yourself at jeopardy. Flexible options in terms of say payments might be a payment plan. It might be that you offer afterpay. It might be that you have debit success in your clinic and people can do it that way. You don't want to be the one fielding this in this market. If you're offering some sort of payment plan and they're paying after the fact, you are going to be the one wearing those costs. You don't want to be that in that situation. So use something like a zip pay, an afterpay, whatever it is, to give them the opportunity to pay in instalments, but you still get paid up front. Remember with things like that, that you cannot legally add the cost of that transaction on top. So zip pay from memory is five or five point five percent they charge of whatever that transaction amount is. Work that into your prices then. So if that's the case, your price goes up a little bit for those people coming in on those payment plans or those payment services. And no, you're not on charging the transaction fee. That's just the cost of the program. Now, the next thing I'm really seeing lately, and this has been coming all year, but gosh, it's really hyping up, isn't it? And it's the question of AI. AI. And it's coming from two schools. Yeah, it's coming from two different pathways, really. One is the practitioner pathway, because you're out there being told that you need to master AI, you need to be seen by AI, you need to do this whole other level of marketing to get onto AI's books and to be seen and come up in searches. Then we've got the whole other fight happening of clients who are on AI, asking the questions, getting the information. Now, sometimes AI is accurate, absolutely, but sometimes it is completely flipping wrong. And you know that. We have to really start to balance this AI situation. And the honest answer to this for you know, when we're talking about June, what's happening right now, the amount of prackies that are coming to me going, I know I need to set up this AI stuff and I've got to put all these pages on my

AI Hype Versus Practical Use

SPEAKER_00 15:10

website. You actually don't. You actually don't. Because if you have a website that has the right content on it, that's keyword rich, that has blogs on the topics of interest to your clients, you are going to stand out as an expert to AI regardless. If you want to go and add an FAQ page to your website that AI can read very easily, great, go ahead. But don't feel like you have to add this whole other dramatic load to your marketing bucket because someone said that AI needs all of this from you. Now, on the other side, you've got clients who are using AI to understand things, to know things, to learn things. What's really important when those people come to you and practice is we don't want to be disregarding what they've learned. And this is a conversation I've had with a few practitioners recently, because it can be really easy when they come in and go, Oh, I put this in AI and it says this is wrong with me. It can be really easy for us to diss that and go, oh, well, that's rubbish. And it's okay to think that, but we certainly don't want to say that, do we? So remember to be positive, remember to be encouraging. It's really great that you've taken a positive step and you've researched your health. I'm so glad to see that. And with everything, there's gonna be good and bad points here. So let's, you know, break that down. Or just I'm so glad that you're looking at your health in such a thorough way. That's all the acknowledgement you need to say. We don't need to fight against it, going, no, our knowledge is better than AI, because we know our knowledge is better than AI. We don't need to do that. The third thing I want to bring up with AI is in relation to your marketing content, because at the moment, everybody I speak to is using AI for their marketing content. Now, if you've been following this podcast for a while, we've had discussions about this before. But I really want to talk about right now what the right way is to use AI, because it is not a spare set of hands. It is not a free worker who's just going to churn out blogs for you. Because I guarantee you that if you start popping those blogs on your website ad lib straight off the AI, someone else is doing the same thing. Case in point, last week I decided to do a trial. I was writing a description for a new service in my clinic. And I had a description, well, an idea of the description, and I put it into three different AI. So I've got Claude, I've got Sintra, and I've got Manifest. I put it into all three and I said, I've got a service, this is what it's for. Can you help write a short paragraph description for me? These three AIs all gave me pretty much exactly the same thing, and they all had the same really bad cliche in there. I was shocked with how much it's the same content. So when you're putting into it, hey, give me a blog about detoxing in spring or immunity tips for winter, I guarantee you there's a thousand other practitioners putting the same prompt in getting the same content. So the best way to let AI help you is to let it genuinely help you right now with drafts of content that you then go and write yourself. Or even better, don't even let it draft content. Let it help you brainstorm. This is my market, this is the client I want to talk to. I want to write some blogs on topics that are going to be really interesting to my client, my niche right now. What's some ideas? That's a much better way to use AI right now. You might want to get it to help you write an email, you might want to get it to help you research. I want to write a blog on the cutting-edge developments in natural health for autoimmunity. Great. That can speed up your process. Imagine how much time that can save you when AI gives you a list of the most recent articles that have come out on that topic. That's absolutely fantastic. But remembering in all of this, AI cannot replace your clinical judgment. It cannot replace your relationship with your clients, and it cannot replace what you know as a quality clinician. So put AI in the bucket it deserves to be in. And try not to get swept up on what I'm calling the AI tsunami, because it's going to distract you from the things you actually need to do to keep your business moving forward. Now, the other thing that I'm seeing right now, and again, it's something that's been coming for a while, but wow, it's really hitting home at the moment, is the new practitioner wave. New practitioner wave. We've always got practitioners, you know, learning, graduating, coming into the market. But this year, it has never ever been so easy to create a website, create an online presence, get some content up there and get seen. So people, even not graduates, people that have been around for a long time and might have only had a Facebook page or only had a Google profile, are now coming out with bigger online presences. So the competition out there is getting bigger, it's getting louder, it's getting more overwhelming for our clients. What this means, and this is the real takeaway for you guys this month, is differentiation. There is a huge demand now for you to be different, to be different. It's no longer good enough to go, hey, I'm a gut cracky, I'm a hormone

Differentiation In A Crowded Market

SPEAKER_00 20:26

pracky. That's great, but how are you different within that? What's your ethos? What do you stand for? What do you bring to the table that's going to be a benefit to your clients? Now, this is actually really good news for those of you who really have something you love to do, you're passionate about what you do, you have a clear idea of that niche, that market, and what your edge is. For those of you that have read my book, the section that I wrote on it's no longer good enough to have a niche, you've got to find an edge. That's where you need to start. If you haven't got my book, guys, it's called The Abundant Healer, you can get it on Amazon. It's about $24. I really recommend getting that if you need a starting point on where to go with that stuff. In this market, you need to be known for something specific. So I would consider right now what is that thing for you? Do some work on that, do some brainstorming around that. Are you different enough? Do you stand out for something? Now it doesn't have to be mind-blowingly novel. It doesn't have to be a fantastic new idea. Um I always say, look, how many Indian restaurants are out there? They're all fantastic. I love Indian food, but in my own little local market area, in the same street, we've got three of them. How many hairdressers are there? Well, there's actually three hairdressers and there's two barbers. In the same little precinct. Did they sit down and think, gee, I probably shouldn't open my Indian restaurant because there's already some here, or gee, I shouldn't open my salon because there's already a hairdresser? No, they didn't. And the people that go into one, they're gonna love this one and not that one. One. The people that go into this hairdresser are going to love this one and not that one. This is where your differentiation comes out. So consider that this month. Now, before I wrap up, I want to circle back to something I said earlier on because we talked about this mid-year revenue gap. Well, that's what I call it anyway, where things get a little bit quieter, people are holding their money, and this always happens. But it is accentuated. It's accentuated this June because of the cost of living crisis that we are in. So not only are we in this mid-year gap where people are distracted by interfinancial year stuff, we've got kids going on school holidays, so we're not coming to appointments, we're extending time between our appointments, but we've also got a real cost of living crisis where people are going, hang on, that hundred dollars I used to spend with you, I need that to put petrol in the car this week. So it's not a matter of prioritization, it's a matter of necessity, isn't it? Right now we could panic. Brandon going, oh what am I gonna do? Our businesses are dying. That's not the case at all. This is a phase, it's a season, all seasons change, we've just got to see it through. Okay, if you're stuck here right now, you've just got to see it through. So what are we going to do instead of panicking? I'm gonna tell you what to do instead of panicking.

Referrals And Outreach That Work Now

SPEAKER_00 23:16

What I would love for you to do is spend some time writing down some ideas. What could you do in your practice right now to get some new clients to increase revenue? And no, the answer is not more social media posts. No, no, no, it's not adding a new channel. None of that will work because you know it normally takes about 12 weeks to see traction there. In this market, which is so noisy and so cluttered, you really are probably looking at longer, and I'm seeing timelines around six months before we get real data in some cases. So, what can you action right now that is going to start to bridge that gap in your business? And by and large, it's actually got a lot to do with connection, conversation, networks, referrals. It's the trust building that you can be doing right now. So remember things like reaching out to past clients. When's the last time you did a reminder campaign with your clients? I did one for my clients coming back into Health Haven. I have clients' emails set up in my system, absolutely, and I'm sending out emails, but I wanted to do an SMS campaign. Just once I don't normally SMS my clients, but I wanted to say, hey, I'm back. The clinic's open again, and I knew the best way for them to all find that was an SMS. What that meant though was because I don't have their SMS details in any of my systems, it's only names and email addresses that I kept. I had to sit here with my phone and manually text a thousand people. I know that sounds like a big job. And it wasn't fun. I didn't enjoy doing it, I will admit. I wrote myself a note on the phone and I wrote what the message was going to be. Hi, dot dot dot. Little message, link to the website. Look forward to seeing you then in clinic soon, Cass. Copy and paste that to every client, plug the name in, send. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So look, it does take a while, it took me a few hours, but I have to tell you the conversion rates are very, very high. The amount of clients that I've had come back. So think about that. Where can you get referral partners right now? Walk the pavement, people. Stop trying to sit behind a screen and run a business. That's not how these businesses work in this market. Get some flyers and get out there. Print them on your computer if you have to, it doesn't matter. Get out there, meet people, drop flies to local businesses, show up at events, book yourself a stall at a local market or the organic farmers markets. They seem to be everywhere now in every location on the weekends. Book those, show up there. All you need is yourself, a table, some flyers, introduce what you do, introduce your business. So I want you to put your thinking cap on, and I want you to come up with 50 things that you could do in your business right now to generate more clients and more revenue. 50 different things, and I don't want any of them to be social media. What that actually gives you is I call that a contingency plan. It gives you a list of things you can go to do instead of panic. So instead of panicking, going, oh my gosh, client numbers are down, no one's got any money, they can't come. You pull out that list and you start at the top and you work your way through. Now, as we close out this episode, I just want to give you a reminder because this is the first week of June, we have tax time coming up. It's time for the mid-year check, okay? You're coming up to tax time. I would really recommend getting a handle on your numbers now. There's nothing worse than getting right up to tax time when you don't have any time to make any changes and find that you've got a big tax bill on your hands. There are always ways to mitigate that, and this is not financial advice by any means. Get an accountant, ask their question, but much better to find out now that you know you're over the tax bracket and you need to offload some cash rather than find out on the 29th of June. So have a look at your numbers now. The numbers you need to be looking at are your revenue. What's your revenue now versus last year? Have a look month by month. How is it going? How is this month compared to last month? How is this month compared to the same month

Tax Time Numbers And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 27:26

last year? That year on year check is really, really helpful. Good to also have a look at your conversion rate. So if you are getting inquiries and discovery calls, what's the conversion rate on those? Is it 80%? Is it 20%? Did it used to be 80% and now it's 20%? That's an interesting number to have a look at. Why is that happening? Also have a look at your retention rate. How long are people staying with you? Are they staying long enough to get results? Are 80% of clients have retention with you, or only 10%? Are you stuck in a rut where people come once or twice and then you don't see them again? If so, dive into that. What's going on there? So know your numbers, have a good look at those. And I would say too, don't be scared of your numbers. A lot of people tell me, a lot of prackies tell me, I don't look at my numbers because I'm scared. I don't want to see what's there. It's never as much as I want. Numbers are just a metric. Numbers are just data. And whether there's $12, $1,200, or $12 million in that bank account, it's just data. And the number that's there today will be very different to the number that's there next week, will be very different to the number that's there in 10 years. It's just data and data that tells us where we need to go. Do we need more clients? Do we need more retention? Do we need better conversion? Do we need to strike up some more marketing? Try to take the emotion out of it. It's just numbers, it's just data, and it's just data that's going to inform your next steps. So, wrapping up this episode, we talked about the current state of play for June 2026. We talked about the return of private health fund rebates and what that means for some practitioners and what's actually going on there. And if you are in line for those, get a hustle on and get yourselves reinstated with something like high caps as well, can be really useful. We talked about the mid-year revenue gap and the cost of living crisis and how those two are interplaying right now to make things a little bit harder than we've seen before. We talked about AI from the point of view of the practitioner, from the point of view of the patient, and the point of view of our marketing. And we also talked about the ever expanding market because it's so easy to be online now and have a good online presence. And then we wrapped up talking about the mid-year check of your numbers and to dive into that now. So go and put an hour in your diary, a time where you can sit down and look at the numbers of your business and decide on your next steps forward. All right, friends, I hope you enjoyed that. This has been what I'm calling the Practitioner

Key Takeaways And Closing

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Pulse. This is June 2026. I will be back with the next practitioner pulse in the first week of July, and I look forward to seeing you for that one. Until then, you will see our regular episode drop next week. Have a great week, everyone. Goodbye for now.