Chiropractor guidelines

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

Who can provide chiropractic services?

You can provide services if you are registered under the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law (e.g. AHPRA) to practice in the chiropractic 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 chiropractic treatment or services 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 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.

Patient consultations

We can help pay for:

  • chiropractic consultations, including lasers and dry needling techniques
  • out of rooms consultations – includes a travel fee for travel of less than 30 minutes

Radiology

We can help pay for:

Travel

We can help pay for:

  • travel, when the client is medically unfit to travel (included as part of out of rooms consultation above)

Travel time can be paid for travel to and from your practice address and your patient's residence. Where more than one patient is visited in a single travel period, total travel costs should be apportioned equally between patients.

Exercise programs

We can help pay for:

  • supervised exercise programs
  • monitoring and evaluating gym/swim programs

Equipment and orthoses

We can help pay for:

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.

Concurrent treatments

Concurrent allied health treatments are not generally recommended to treat the same injury. This is line with the principles of the Clinical Framework. There can be some exceptions, such as group exercise.

If you or your patient believe concurrent allied health treatments are necessary, please contact us to discuss their needs.

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, chiropractic services may be included as part of that.

How much we can pay

We can pay for services in line with our Chiropractic 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:

  • services that are included as part of a hospital inpatient bed fee
  • x-rays and radiological services by chiropractors which do not meet advice for chiropractors on the use of radiography (x-rays) from the Chiropractic Board of Australia
  • full spine x-rays
  • more than two spinal radiological items from the Chiropractic fee schedule for the same patient for the same injury
  • pool charges, such as pool hire and entry included in the hydrotherapy fee, aqua aerobics and swimming attire

Also see general items we cannot pay for.

For more information

Access our policy for Allied health and physical therapies.