DVA Claims Help Centre

No. Mental health treatment is fully funded through Non-Liability Health Care with no claim needed, and Provisional Access to Medical Treatment can cover common conditions while a claim is assessed. Once a condition is accepted, its treatment is funded through your Veteran Card. Compensation comes later. Getting you treated is where we start.

Yes. Anyone with at least one day of continuous full-time service can get fully funded treatment for any mental health condition, for as long as it is needed, without proving service caused it. Reserve training days do not count, though some reservists qualify through disaster relief, border protection or a serious training accident. Getting the cover added to your Veteran Card is one of the first things we sort out.

A DVA arrangement that funds treatment for commonly accepted conditions while your claim is still being decided, so you are not left waiting untreated. Once liability is accepted, treatment continues under your Veteran Card. We check whether your condition qualifies when we lodge.

There is an interim payment called the Veteran Payment, available while DVA assesses a mental health claim, subject to work hours, age, residency and income and asset tests. It goes in alongside your liability claim, and we include it when we lodge.

Establishing initial liability, which is DVA accepting your condition as service related. That decision opens funded treatment, puts the condition on your Veteran Card, and is the gate to any compensation. Treatment does not have to wait for it. Compensation does.

No. New claims are lodged under the MRCA, which carries no time limit on lodging for most conditions, and claims are regularly accepted decades after discharge. What matters is the evidence linking your condition to your service, and older claims often benefit most from a thorough review of your service medical records.

It depends on where you are. If you are on a planned medical transition, lodging earlier matters, because DVA prioritises transitioning members and you can request that your separation be held until liability is determined. Conditions can be lodged while you are still in. We will talk through what makes sense for your situation.

Usually you do not yet, and that is normal. Most people arrive with one or two in mind, and the records review often finds more, because service records hold injuries and symptoms people have forgotten or never linked to service. Since 1 July 2026 some of those fall under presumptive liability. The review is where the list comes from.

DVA needs a confirmed diagnosis before it can accept a condition, and since 1 July 2026 it matters more. A presumptive condition lodged with a diagnosis can be decided in under two weeks. Without one it joins the ordinary queue. If your records show the injury, the missing piece is usually just a current assessment, and we help you get it.

Longer than DVA's headline suggests. DVA quotes around 145 days for initial liability, but claims actually finalised in the year to July 2026 averaged 327 days from lodgement. Presumptive conditions lodged with a diagnosis can be decided in under two weeks. Most delay comes from claims going in incomplete, which is what a prepared claim avoids. Nobody can make DVA move faster, so be wary of anyone who promises speed.

A rejection usually does not mean the condition is not service related. More often the evidence was not structured the way DVA needed, or the wrong pathway was argued. Some previously rejected conditions are now on the presumptive list. We read the decision, work out what was missing, and prepare a claim that addresses it.

A new way of accepting claims from 1 July 2026. For conditions on a published list, DVA accepts the condition as service related without you proving the link, as long as you have a confirmed diagnosis and your service meets the criteria for that condition. There is no separate application. If your condition qualifies, DVA applies it first.

The list runs to around 250 entries. The ones that come up most are tinnitus and hearing loss, covered for any service with no minimum period, and PTSD after more than 28 days of warlike service. Lower limb osteoarthritis and lumbar spondylosis need 200 days of peacetime service or 133 of warlike. Fractures, sprains and dislocations during service are covered, as are several skin cancers and 45 secondary conditions. Working out which of yours qualify is the first thing we check.

In a fixed order. Presumptive liability first, and if it applies the claim is accepted with nothing further to prove. Then whether it was an injury that happened on duty. Only then the Statements of Principles, which is where most claims used to start. Peacetime service is judged on the balance of probabilities. Warlike and other operational service gets the more generous reasonable hypothesis standard.

A legal instrument listing the known causes of a condition, made by the Repatriation Medical Authority from the medical evidence. Where one applies, a listed factor must be met and connected to your service. There are hundreds of them. Since 1 July 2026 they are the third test rather than the first, but they still decide most claims not on the presumptive list. If a Statement changes mid review, the version that helps you applies, and we raise it.

Since 1 July 2026 an injury that happened on duty can be accepted without a Statement of Principles, whatever caused it. Injuries only, so a heart attack, stroke, fall or fracture at work counts, and a disease that develops later does not. Being at your place of duty, called in, in the field, at sea or in early recruit training counts. Travelling to work, on leave, on call or at home does not.

Yes. You do not need combat service or a deployment. Training injuries, accidents on base and things that happened during routine duties are all claimable, and since 1 July 2026 many fall under presumptive liability or the on duty rule without a Statement of Principles at all.

It comes down to when you lodge. From 1 July 2026 the VEA and DRCA closed to new claims, so every new claim is decided under the MRCA no matter when you served. Claims lodged before that date stay under their original Act. The VETS Act made those changes, and added presumptive liability, the on duty rule, the tobacco change and several entitlements previously closed to VEA and DRCA members.

No. Everything you already receive continues as it was, keeps being indexed, and is not reassessed. Income support was left alone entirely. Where there is action to take, it is on the other side. Some of what opened up on 1 July only opens when you lodge something, and we check that for you.

Not the way it used to. Conditions arising from tobacco use before 1 January 1998 can now be accepted as service related, provided the smoking started or increased because of service. Smoking that started or increased on or after that date is still excluded. For a lot of older members that single date decides the claim.

From 1 July 2027 the 12 session treatment cycle goes, provider fees rise, and a $5,000 annual review threshold comes in. DVA calls it a checkpoint rather than a cap, with clinically necessary treatment continuing above it. It does not apply to SRDP or TPI recipients or the catastrophically injured, and Open Arms, dental, optical, hearing, GP and specialist services do not count towards it.

A tax free lump sum under section 80 of the MRCA, paid once for each eligible child where you are assessed at 80 or more impairment points, on top of your permanent impairment compensation. Children under 16 qualify on age, and 16 to under 25 in full time study. For claims from 1 July 2026 it can be shared between carers, and former VEA and DRCA members can now qualify, but it does not surface automatically. We check it.

Incapacity payments replace lost income where a condition stops you working. They are taxable. Permanent impairment compensation is for the lasting effect of the condition itself and is tax free, paid periodically with the option to convert to a lump sum. That election is final. They are assessed separately and you can receive both.

DVA uses a guide called GARP M. Each accepted condition gets a score in impairment points, the scores are combined, and DVA adds a lifestyle rating for how your conditions affect daily life. Points and lifestyle rating together set the compensation, and age affects the lump sum figure. Two people with the same diagnosis can be assessed differently, because how the condition is documented carries as much weight as the diagnosis. That documentation is what we prepare with you.

Mostly no. Permanent impairment compensation, the Special Rate Disability Pension, the Additional Disablement Amount, the Disability Compensation Payment, and compensation for household services, attendant care and treatment are all tax exempt. Incapacity payments are taxable, because they replace wages, unless the wages they replace were themselves tax free. Where your position is not clear we will say so and point you to a registered tax agent.

It can. The Disability Compensation Payment does not count as income for Service Pension or Age Pension. But compensation for lost earnings, including incapacity payments, can reduce an income support pension if you are below pension age. DVA has strict notification deadlines, 14 days for income support recipients, 21 days for Disability Compensation Payment holders, 7 days for Age Pension, with penalties for missing them. We track those with you and tell you when a financial adviser needs to be in the room.

For the first time, yes, if a service related condition is preventing you from working. Your existing Disability Compensation Payment continues alongside it. There is no automatic assessment, so nobody will offer this to you.

Yes, and this is the easiest of them. Recipients of the Special Rate, Temporary Special Rate or Intermediate Rate can now claim MRCA incapacity payments, and for those three rates DVA does not require fresh medical evidence of incapacity. The evidence that established your work capacity under the VEA carries across.

A tax free payment for members of age pension age with high impairment, doing the job the Extreme Disablement Adjustment did under the VEA. It needs at least 70 impairment points and a lifestyle rating of 6 or more. There is no claim form and eligibility is considered on request, so we check it for anyone over age pension age who is near 70 points.

If your conditions were accepted under the VEA, household services and attendant care are now available to you. DRCA members already receiving them keep them, and we check whether the higher MRCA rate applies. The Special Rate Disability Pension is also open to former VEA and DRCA members, but it still requires MRCA incapacity payments and 50 or more impairment points, so an incapacity claim and a permanent impairment claim both come first.

Your medical records, specialist reports and the legislative factors that have to be met, pulled together into one organised submission in the order DVA needs to see it. Since 1 July 2026 that includes identifying which conditions fall under presumptive liability or the on duty rule. It hands the decision-maker a finished argument instead of a pile of records.

Charlotte reviews them herself, using a purpose-built system that reads your records, including handwriting, and finds and organises the evidence for each condition. She then writes the claim reports from the original record data. The system runs on a local server under our control. Your records are never sent to ChatGPT or any other third party AI service, they sit on Australian servers under Australian privacy law, and nobody but your treating doctors and DVA sees them without your written consent.