Pension claim problems for people with acute or terminal illness

On 5 March the Commonwealth Ombudsman, Professor John McMillan released a report highlighting problems in the assessment of claims for disability support pension (DSP) from people with acute or terminal illness.

The Ombudsman’s office received complaints about the assessment of DSP claims from people with acute or terminal illness such as advanced or aggressive cancers.

In many cases, the claimants were undergoing intensive treatment or recovering from the long term side effects of a previous treatment.

They were unable to work as a result but were also unable to satisfy Centrelink that their condition was permanent for the purposes of qualifying for DSP.

As well as highlighting the difficulties that can occur by a strict application of social security law and policy, other problems identified in the report include:

• Lack of guidance for doctors in answering questions about a patient’s long term prognosis;
• Unavailability of DSP for people experiencing an acute illness of uncertain duration; and
• Inadequate assessment in some instances by Job Capacity Assessment assessors of the impact of an acute illness suffered by a patient.

The Ombudsman has recommended a number of administrative measures to ensure more appropriate outcomes for social security applicants with acute or terminal illnesses which have been accepted by several of the relevant government departments and agencies.