Your patient must support their DSP claim with medical evidence. We need specific medical evidence for some conditions.
We suggest that you encourage patients to book a consultation with you to discuss their medical evidence for a DSP claim.
Your patient may get DSP if they have a condition that meets the manifest medical rules.
If your patient is claiming DSP and has a terminal illness, you can complete the Verification of Terminal Illness form.
We’ll need to assess your patient’s medical conditions against the Impairment Tables if they don’t either:
- have a terminal illness
- meet the manifest medical rules.
The Medical Evidence Checklist for treating health professionals (SA478) details what evidence we need from you to support their DSP claim. Your patient can use the Medical Evidence Checklist (SA473) to help them know what evidence to request.
Our allied health professionals assess your patient’s medical conditions against the Impairment Tables on the Social Services website. To do this, each diagnosed condition needs to be likely to persist for more than 2 years and reasonably treated and stabilised.
Your patient must meet this criterion and give us supporting medical evidence for each medical condition. You can read more about:
- how we assess your patient for DSP
- how we assess functional capacity
- how to help with your patient’s claim
- remuneration options.
It’s unlikely that your patient will be eligible for DSP if either of these apply:
- your patient is still awaiting diagnosis
- it’s likely that their condition will improve with reasonable treatment.
If your patient meets the medical rules, they also need to meet non-medical rules to get DSP.
Your patient doesn’t have to get DSP to claim or access services under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).
They may not be eligible for DSP if they get certain payments from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA).