New Victorian Wrongs Act regulations 2015

July 1, 2015

The WRONGS (PART VBA CLAIMS) REGULATIONS 2015 has some relevance to forensic psychiatrists. Go to Resources to see the details of the changes.

The Wrongs (Part VBA) Claims Regulations 2015 prescribe forms and other matters for the purpose of Part VBA and came into operation on 9 May 2015 and revoked the Wrongs (Part VBA Claims) Regulations 2005. The changes do not appear significant in essence eg psychiatric injury must not have arisen from physical injury, but in relation to certificates of assessment of degrees of impairment under sections 28LN and 28LNA of the Act, the 2015 Regulations prescribe Forms 1 and 2 of Schedule 1 . After examining the claimant, you must certify:

whether the degree of impairment resulting from the claimant’s psychiatric injury is or will be once the injury has stabilised more than 10% or not.

The 2015 Regulations are said to introduce the criteria that in relation to the degree of permanent impairment resulting from a psychiatric injury and symptoms the approved medical practitioner must certify that the psychiatric injury has not arisen as a consequence of, or secondary to, a physical injury. Any secondary psychiatric injury must be disregarded for the purposes of the Certificate of Assessment. I thought we were already doing that

The 2015 Regulations also prescribe Form 3 in Schedule 1 as the correct form to be used for a request to waive assessment of impairment; and Form 4 in Schedule 1 as the correct form to be used for providing the prescribed information. There were previously no forms provided in the 2005 Regulations. This is of little interest to us.

FURTHER INFORMATION MUST BE PROVIDED TO THE MEDICAL PANEL

The 2015 Regulations add the following prescribed information for the purposes of section 28LZA of the Act to what was previously prescribed in the 2005 Regulations:

email address of the respondent
email address of the respondent’s legal or other representative
the claimant’s statement of claim if this has been provided to the respondent (this replaces the date, time and location of incident, description of incident and details of injury claimant alleges to have suffered as a result of the incident that were prescribed in the 2005 Regulations)
a copy of Form 4 received from the claimant

The 2015 Regulations also prescribe Form 5 in Schedule 1 for the correct form to be used for a Notice of Referral of Medical Question to Medical Panel. There was no such form provided in the 2005 Regulations. The medical question in Form 5 is to be stated as follows:

does the degree of impairment resulting from the physical injury to the claimant alleged in the claim satisfy the threshold level? and/or

does the degree of impairment resulting from the psychiatric or psychological injury to the claimant alleged in the claim satisfy the threshold level

New Victorian Wrongs Act regulations 2015