What is the impairment benefit?

The impairment benefit is a lump sum payment – that is, a one-off sum of money dropped in your bank account. With only some rare exceptions, you are eligible to be assessed for the impairment benefit if you have an accepted TAC claim and have suffered any permanent injuries – physical or mental – from your accident.

If you have a common law claim for compensation, you can make both an impairment benefit claim and then a common law claim. You don’t need to choose!

Claiming the impairment benefit

To claim the impairment benefit, you need to:

• Be medically stable. Normally, this means your doctors have a good idea about the long-term impact of your injuries, with no major treatment (like surgery) planned. There’s no rule on how long this takes, but 12 months after an accident, or 6 months after surgery (whichever is longer) is a good rule of thumb.
• Be assessed by medico-legal doctors. These are very experienced doctors in their field (eg, surgeons, psychiatrists) who have also received training in the law on the impairment benefit. Your treating doctors, like your GP, cannot assess you for this benefit.
•  Lodge your claim for impairment benefits on the TAC

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How much is the impairment benefit?

The amount you receive depends on your assessment by the medico-legal doctors.

The doctors look at your diagnosis, will ask you questions about your injuries, and do tests such as of your range of motion or looking for muscle wasting. After they’re done with their examinations, they will assign a percentage, called the “whole person impairment” to each of your injuries. These percentages are combined to give your total whole person impairment.

The amount you get for a given whole person impairment is listed on the TAC’s website, here, and is indexed every 1 July.

For example, as at the day of writing, a 15% whole person impairment provides a benefit of $17,210, while a 25% whole person impairment provides a benefit of $40,330.

Though the table goes all the way up to 100% - $437,830 – such high impairments are incredibly rare. Most claimants receive under 30%.

Do I need a lawyer to claim the impairment benefit?

No! But it’s a very good idea.

If you don’t want to engage a lawyer, you can ask the TAC to assess your impairment benefit claim. However, if you do so without a lawyer, keep in mind:

• The TAC will send you to the next available, suitably qualified examiner; not necessarily the best one for your specific injuries.
• Once you receive back the reports from TAC, you won’t know whether the assessments are correct unless you have an experienced lawyer to guide you.
• The TAC don’t have to accept the examiner’s percentage. If they try to lower your overall impairment, you won’t have anyone to fight for you.
• Lastly, consider that you might also have a TAC common law claim, for which you do need a lawyer – find out more, here. It can significantly reduce your overall costs to use a lawyer for both claims, as your lawyer can recover some legal costs directly from the TAC after winning your impairment benefit claim.

I always strongly recommend engaging a lawyer for your impairment benefit claim.

Conclusion

The impairment benefit is an incredibly valuable benefit, and in my opinion, is under-rated by some other lawyers in the field, who want to focus only on the common law claim.

While the common law claim is worth significantly more the impairment benefit:

• Can come much earlier than a common law claim, getting you an injection of cash when you need it;
• Is normally easier to obtain than a common law claim;
• Is a straightforward process, and
• Can help build valuable evidence for your common law claim, while reducing your overall legal fees.

If you would like to talk about a potential impairment benefit and/or common law claim, please don’t hesitate to reach out for a free discussion.

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