Does your child still need an autism diagnosis?
What if there were up to 20 Medicare-funded allied health sessions sitting unclaimed for your child? For under-25s with complex neurodevelopmental conditions, there are!
This includes autism, or anything where support is needed across two or more developmental areas.
The pathway is straightforward:
GP → paediatrician or psychiatrist → allied health referral.
This Medicare funding covers 8 assessment services and up to 20 treatment sessions. Both are ‘lifetime caps’, but eligibility for this specific Medicare item expires at 25.
Sessions can happen at your child's home or school, obviously which matters a lot if leaving the house is its own project.
There's also a one-per-lifetime diagnosis item (135, 289, 92140 or 92434) when the specialist confirms a diagnosis and develops a treatment and management plan at the same time. If that item has already been used, a regular attendance item covers the consult instead.
If you want the full FAQ with all item numbers, CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE PDF.
Not sure if it’s been claimed already? You can call 132 011 and ask.
Finally, there’s some common errors made with autism diagnoses that I see.
Some of these may have contributed in a participant’s rejection or removal from the NDIS scheme.
If your child’s Autism diagnosis did not meet these diagnostic standards when originally made, you may want to consider checking their autism diagnosis/level is accurate.
If your therapy and medical team aren’t across the Autism National Guidelines, this isn’t their fault - NDIS tried their best to get it out there and even did the press release on a Tuesday (optimal for the media to pick up.) But the media ignored it, because I guess diagnosis and autism stuff was boring in 2018.
I checked Google Trends for “National Guideline for the assessment and diagnosis of autism in Australia.”
The media release was made in October 2018 and the traffic search numbers were so insignificant, they registered as Zero in Google.
Because, in 2018, NDIS paid for most of the funding to have AutismCRC create best practice National Guidelines created. PLEASE email the link to your therapist, GP and Paediatrician and ensure they have a robust understanding of them, so they can be followed to the letter when your child’s diagnosis is made.
See the 2018 media release here: https://www.ndis.gov.au/news/396-ministers-welcome-national-guideline-autism-assessment-and-diagnosis
Read the Autism Diagnosis Guidelines here: https://www.autismcrc.com.au/best-practice/assessment-and-diagnosis
Meet the National Guideline Assessment and diagnosis process!
And you can even create an AutismCRC login! This will give you access to show you what a diagnostic process looks like, before your child starts attending assessment appointments. Here’s an example of the information available, once you log in.
Click on the courses below to create a login.
Phew, that was a lot of info! If any of it helped you out, feel free to give us an update in the Facebook group. Talk soon!
Join us here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/600867071601242/
