Canberra Workers Compensation FAQs

Your payslip answers this, not your postcode. Australian Public Service employees are covered by Comcare. ACT Government employees are also under the Commonwealth SRC Act, with claims managed by EML. Most private-sector workers in the ACT are under the territory's own scheme, insured through companies such as Allianz, QBE or GIO. Around 40 national employers (Telstra, Australia Post and ANZ among them) hold federal self-insurance licences and run their own SRC Act claims, while a separate, shorter list of companies self-insures inside the ACT scheme and stays under the territory's rules. Our which-scheme page settles it with a single question (who do you work for?), or call and we'll work it out with you.

Because the certificate of capacity holds the claim up, and only a doctor can produce one. Comcare wants a medical practitioner behind its certificate, a GP or a specialist such as a psychiatrist, and the territory's private scheme insists on a doctor for every certificate from first to last. Your physio and your psychologist treat you; certifying you is outside their lane in both systems. Book the doctor first and the rest of the care has something to hang off.

Not with us. The certificate appointment is an in-person one, in Canberra, where the doctor can actually examine you before signing anything. Neither scheme has ever published a position on certificates written from a video consult, and an unanswered question is not a green light, so we don't experiment with it on your claim. Everything around the certificate, including reviews, treatment and follow-up, can run by video whenever that suits you.

Under the territory's private scheme, yes, and that is the design. The trigger for weekly money is you telling your employer about the injury, not the insurer saying yes; liability gets sorted while payments run. Getting the claim form in within 7 days keeps them running. Meanwhile your employer owes its insurer notification inside 48 hours, and the insurer owes you a decision inside 28 days; if it lets that pass in silence, the law treats your claim as accepted. All of it hangs off a current doctor's certificate being in place.

Two clocks at the claim stage, and which one applies depends on how your condition is classified. A physical injury claim is meant to be determined inside 20 calendar days; anything classed as a disease, which is where psychological conditions sit, gets 60. If the determination goes against you, the next clocks are yours: 30 days to request reconsideration by an independent officer, then 60 days to take that reconsideration to the Administrative Review Tribunal. Lodging there costs you nothing in a workers compensation matter.

The order matters more than the paperwork. On the Commonwealth side, which covers APS and ACT Government workers alike, psychology only becomes funded care once a doctor has referred you and put the shape of the treatment in writing: what form it takes, how often, and for how long. In the territory's private scheme, psychology sits squarely inside compensable medical treatment, yet the claim itself still cannot move without the doctor's certificate. Our psychologists and doctors share one clinical file, so referral, directive and certificate land in sequence without you ferrying paper between practices.

No. The territory scheme leaves the choice with you: certificates can come from any doctor registered with AHPRA anywhere in the country, and you are even allowed to nominate a practice, rather than one named person, as your treating doctor. Comcare is similar: your own GP or a treating specialist, with no approval step first. Insurers can send you to their own independent examiners along the way, but who treats you stays your call.

It depends which side of the line you are on, and here the territory scheme is the generous one. Private-sector workers in the ACT keep compensation cover on the ordinary run between home and work, a protection NSW dropped years ago. On the SRC Act side, for Commonwealth and ACT Government workers, the commute is covered only in narrower circumstances, so bring that one to us rather than assuming either way.

Approved treatment on an accepted claim is billed to the insurer or claims manager, not to you. That covers the doctor, physiotherapy and psychology care provided under the claim. Where something needs approval before it can start, we do the requesting and the paperwork.

No. Comcare determinations can be reconsidered and then taken to the ART, as above. The ACT private scheme works differently: there is no claims tribunal, conciliation is not on the table for a rejected claim, and formal disputes go to arbitration in the ACT Magistrates Court, with appeal to the Supreme Court. In both systems, rejections often turn on the medical evidence: an expired certificate, a vague diagnosis, or reports that contradict each other. Tightening that evidence is clinical work, and it is squarely our job.

Your claim sits under the Commonwealth SRC Act and is managed day to day by EML on the ACT Government's behalf. WorkSafe ACT is the territory's regulator for private-sector matters and is not who handles ACTPS claims, a distinction that trips up a lot of people. Our team treats ACTPS workers within that system routinely.

To the Department of Veterans' Affairs, not to either scheme on this page. Injuries from ADF service, current or former, run under the MRCA, a system with its own rules that our clinic does not work in; you are better served there by people who handle it daily. Defence's civilian side is different: APS employees at Defence sit with Comcare, and our doctors can help with those claims.

Book online or call us. Bring whatever exists so far: your employer's incident report, any claim number, current medications and any scans or reports. If nothing exists yet because the injury just happened, that's fine — the first appointment is where the paper trail starts, and we build it with you.