Rehabilitation options

Your rehabilitation is a vital part of getting better and back to normal life. There are lots of rehabilitation options, depending on the type of injury and your needs.

Once your treating doctor (either your GP or at a hospital) has assessed your work-related injury or illness and treated you, they’ll recommend next steps to get you on the road to recovery.

Who does what?

It can sometimes be confusing knowing who is responsible for different parts of your treatment and rehabilitation. Your treating doctor will take care of managing your illness or injury overall. They’ll diagnose you, watch over your recovery progress, and help you return to work.

What if I need a specialist?

If your injury is something a GP can’t treat themselves, they’ll need to refer you to another medical provider. This could be directly to an allied health professional for treatment or to a specialist for further examination.

If you‘re sent to a specialist, this is called a Specialist Medical Review.  This will help you and your doctor confirm whether you can begin your recovery journey being treated by an allied health professional of some kind or, in more serious cases, whether surgery is needed.

Sometimes your rehabilitation might even start with something like physiotherapy to see how well you and your injury respond before deciding on surgery.

Once it‘s been worked out, you’ll be referred to the right person for ongoing treatment. The type of medical or allied health practitioner you’re referred to will be the one most appropriate for your injury and needs.

Allied health treatments

Allied health practitioners can treat and manage the clinical care of your injury or illness and can assist greatly in restoring health and function. This is a very big part of getting you back to work and normal life.

Approved treatments

There are many different kinds of medical and allied health professionals that may be accessed. However, there are some that aren‘t covered by WorkCover.