Permanent Impairment Assessments
Request health assessments for workers who have lodged compensation claims for permanent impairment.
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What Is A Permanent Impairment Assessment?
Even with the best medical care, some workers with health conditions won’t fully recover – which means they might be entitled to permanent impairment compensation.
Before compensation can be paid, though, an independent permanent impairment assessment should be conducted by an appropriately qualified practitioner.
Assessments are designed to evaluate whether a permanent impairment exists and how much it has affected the worker.
Different states have different guides to permanent impairment, but, generally, assessors will be doctors, audiologists, or specialists.
These assessments are completed at the end of the claim, after all treatment options have been explored.
Maximum Medical Improvement (MMI) needs to be established before this assessment can go ahead. This means that the workers condition is unlikely to improve significantly, with or without treatment in the next 12 months. Commonly this is associated with the doctor issuing a Final Workers Compensation Medical Certificate.
Permanent impairment can be included in an Independent Medical Examination. To determine which booking is required you can ask the following questions:
- Do you only need permanent impairment assessed? If yes this is a PI booking
- Do you have additional questions to ask the specialist in addition to PI? If yes this is an IME booking
Different states have different guides to permanent impairment, but, generally, assessors will be doctors, audiologists, psychiatrists or specialists.
How Permanent Impairment Is Assessed
Has the health condition led to a reduction in function?
Has the health condition reached maximum medical improvement (MMI)?
To what degree has the health condition reduced function?
Why Choose RediMed?
Your specific needs, risks and requirements are identified and managed at every stage by your dedicated customer relationship manager.
Our practitioners can deliver assessments under all Australian permanent impairment guides, including Comcare, Seacare, and DVA guides.
Our assessors include doctors, specialists, and psychiatrists – one unit to handle every aspect of an assessment.
Each assessment is independently reviewed and validated by our quality assurance unit, ensuring all DPI calculations are accurate.
Permanent Impairment Assessment Process
Permanent Impairment Assessment FAQs
A worker’s degree of permanent impairment is assessed based on their whole-body impairment level (expressed as a percentage). Each jurisdiction – as well as Comcare, Seacare, and the DVA – has its own permanent impairment guide based on the American Medical Association’s Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, Fifth Edition (AMA5).
Under the relevant guide, each injury type has several categories associated with it, each of which encompasses a DPI range for that injury type. Once a category has been determined using the methods specified for that injury type, the degree of permanent impairment is calculated using a method from the base guide (such as AMA5) or one specified in the guide text itself.
Complex injuries are normally assessed separately and then aggregated into a final score. Where an injury requires multiple assessors – for example, a GP, a neurologist, an audiologist, and a psychiatrist – a lead assessor is generally appointed to coordinate the assessment. At RediMed, our integrated approach means that every practitioner works together as part of a coordinated team, resulting in lower assessment costs and more accurate whole-body diagnoses.
Mental health conditions can be classed as permanent impairments. Generally, they fall into two categories: secondary conditions that stem from a physical injury, and primary conditions.
Both are normally assessed by a psychiatrist or, in some jurisdictions, an independent tribunal. Assessments normally need to be made under a diagnostic framework like DSM-5, and generally include evaluations across multiple functional domains, like intelligence or self-care and personal hygiene.
Each of these domains is given a rating from 1 to 5 that correlates with the level of impairment. Once all domains have been assessed, the ratings are normally aggregated, averaged, and calculated into a DPI score for compensation purposes.
While the assessor’s clinical assessment is important in determining DPI, it’s not the only factor. Other medical reports, work evaluations, and information from the worker’s family and friends may also inform their findings – especially if the impairment varies in severity over different times and scenarios.
Not all health conditions manifest immediately. Some, like exposure to the sun or hazardous substances, can take years or even decades to show symptoms. These are known as ‘latent onset injuries’.
Because many latent onset injuries are terminal, like metastasised skin cancer and pneumoconiosis, affected workers may be entitled to additional compensation beyond their other lump-sum payouts and any common law claims. In Queensland, for example, a worker under 70 with a terminal latent onset injury is entitled to an additional payout of their ordinary time earnings multiplied by 216.15 – which, as of 2023, would be $380,575.305.
