These guidelines should be read in conjunction with the information at Working with the TAC.

Who can provide podiatry services?

You can provide services if you are registered under the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law (e.g. AHPRA) to practice in the podiatry profession (other than as a student).

What we can pay for

Within the first 90 days of a client’s accident, we can help pay for podiatry without the need for you or the client to contact us for approval first. The treatment or service must be recommended by a health professional, related to the client’s accident injuries and delivered in line with the Clinical Framework.

If you intend to continue treating a TAC client beyond 90 days after their transport accident you must complete an Allied Health Treatment and Recovery Plan or a letter or email to request further approval. We will review our client’s treatment to ensure it’s reasonable, clinically justified, outcome focused and in line with the Clinical Framework. We will assess your request and let you and the client know our decision about what we can help pay for and for how long.

If our client has not received treatment in 6 months they will need to seek approval from us before we will pay for further treatment. Ask our client for a copy of their approval if you haven’t seen them in 6 months.

For details see What we can pay for and How to seek TAC approval.

Podiatry services

We can help pay for:

• Podiatry consultations.
• Biomechanical examinations.
• Orthomechanical services and procedures, such as impressions and models, prescription orthoses and simple digital or partial prosthesis.
• Out of rooms consultations, where a patient is medically unfit to travel.
• Visits to a patient who is an inpatient at a private hospital, where the cost of podiatry is not included in the hospital bed fee.
• X-rays of the lower extremity, foot and ankle.
• In-rooms podiatric surgery. For podiatric surgery occurring in hospital, see our Medical practitioner guidelines and Private hospital guidelines.

We can help pay for the provision of basic equipment, such as:

• adaptive, modified or custom made orthopaedic footwear
• modifications to a patient’s pre-injury footwear or off the shelf footwear
• footwear that is required to accommodate an orthosis
• prescription, manufacture, supply and fitting of an orthosis
• repair, adjustment or replacement of a pre-existing orthosis damaged in a transport accident
• prosthetic devices and splints

Our approval is required for specialised equipment. Please read our Equipment guidelines and use the Equipment Prescription Form to submit written requests.

Other things to note

Certificates of Capacity

As part of your patient’s treatment, you can complete Certificates of Capacity to assess and certify your patient’s capacity for work.

Medical excess

For accidents that occurred prior to 14 February 2018 a medical excess may apply. Visit the medical excess page to see if it applies to your patient.  If the medical excess applies you will need to invoice the client directly.

Patients with a severe injury

If your patient has a severe injury, the discussion, referral and approval of services may form part of the independence planning process between your patient's treating team and our TAC coordinator.

If your patient already has an individualised funding package, podiatric services may be included as part of that.

How much we can pay

We can pay for services in line with our Podiatry fees.

If your fee is higher than our fee, you may choose to charge the client the difference in the form of a gap payment.

What we cannot pay for

We cannot pay for:

• repair or replacement of an orthoses that was not damaged as a result of the transport accident injury
• maintenance, repair, modification or replacement of an orthoses under warranty
• footwear normally issued by an employer
• non-orthopaedic or standard off the shelf footwear that is not required to fit custom modifications or orthotics required as a result of an accident

Also see general items we cannot pay for.

For more information

Access our policy for Allied health and physical therapies.