Front loading medical

[Guest Watersports]

Hi Guys - I've seen various comments about people doing this but had noticed that it says on the forms you should wait until you're asked ( I guess so that you don't waste your money if you're not eligible).

 

Initially I was going to just sit and wait, but now, like everyone else I think I've caught the impatient bug and would rather be doing something! So I'm hoping you clever people that have already done your medicals and are probably sitting in Australia with visa in passport can answer a few quick questions to help the rest of us "yet to emigrate" poms out!

 

 

The questions I have are:

 

1. Some people mention that you need to wait for the medical forms because they are partly filled in, is that true, or is that agents doing that?

 

2. Does anyone know how much time it roughly saves?

 

3. Do you then wait until the case officer requests the medicals before sending them, or do you just send them with your name and address and hope they fit it all together with your application at their end?

 

Thanks in advance

[Guest Gollywobbler]

Hi Watersports

 

DIMA advise you not to frontload the meds for two main reasons. The first is that they will not normally ask for the meds unless they are sure that the application will not fail on any other grounds - so they are trying to keep your money safe. Also, the visa must be validated by the holder physically travelling to Oz within a year of the earlier of the date of the meds or the police clearances.

 

The police clearances cost peanuts so you can easily re-do those if time starts to look short. The meds generally cost in the region of £200-£250 per adult including the x-rays etc. You wouldn't want to have to do those twice, obviously.

 

If there are any technical problems with the application, it could take a long time to sort them out and get the visa granted, meaning that you might have to re-do the meds. Even if it doesn't come to that, you could find yourselves having to make a short visit to Oz at very short notice indeed - and everybody included in the application has to go through the validation process.

 

What a lot of people do is what I call "semi-frontloading." That is, they watch the forums and watch other people's timelines. Once they judge that it won't be long before they hear from a CO, they get the meds and the police stuff done and sent off. That should still allow plenty of time in which to validate.

 

I think that when frontloading saves time, it can generally save a couple of months or so. However, it doesn't always save time. A friend of mine applied for his skilled 136 visa in January 2006. He has a known medical problem, so he got his meds done in February because he wasn't sure what additional tests etc the MOC might require.

 

Eventually his CO was appointed in July. She said she could not progress his application because she had not received the green light on the guy's meds. He & I chased around trying to locate his meds file. The CO said the hold up was with the LCU. The agents said the same. The LCU said the Medical Officer of the Commonwealth had yet to make a decision about the guy's meds. Phone calls to the MOC's office revealed that the file had never been sent to them.

 

Eventually the LCU admitted that they had sent the file to storage by mistake. At that point the LCU finally woke up, found the file and rushed it round to the MOC, where one of the doctors kindly read it the same day. The doctor then asked for further tests and an up-to-date specialist's report. Those were despatched on Friday - from the UK - by courier to make sure the new papers cannot go missing. They should reach the LCU tomorrow and hopefully they will again rush them round to whichever doctor is waiting for them.

 

However, 5 months has gone completely down the pan in terms of my chum validating his visa if and when it is ever granted. Because of children's school holidays, he worked out that the family could make a short trip to Oz at Christmas/New Year - till he discovered the price. He would now prefer not to have to validate till August 2007, when the children will have their long school holiday. He is now trying to get DIMA to agree that since this delay is the LCU's fault, not the applicant's, it is unreasonable to insist that their visas (if granted) must be validated before a year has elapsed from the date of the original meds.

As yet, DIMA have not indicated which way they will jump about this.

 

I think with his own meds, there is a strong case for saying that the 12 months should not start before the date of the latest specialist's report. However, the rest of his family's meds were also done last Feb, and his wife is the main applicant, which might complicate the validation-period. So we just don't know yet what the outcome will be.

 

If you want to frontload, the forms and the list of Panel Doctors are on the website of the Australian High Commission in London. There's no reason why you can't write the application reference number on them yourself. There is nothing magic about this bit.

 

However I would suggest not frontloading until you think that you should be in line to hear from a CO pretty soon after doing so. By then you'll have had the file number for some time unless you have applied for a really fast-track visa.

 

Cheers

 

Gill

[Guest jordan]

Excellent post Gill, I'm semi-frontloading I'm having my medicals done tomorrow, but my application was acknowledge 4 months ago. I'm hoping by the time my police checks and medicals are complete I will have been assigned a case officer. House is sold so hoping to be gone in Oct. I've filled in the forms myself all my agent did was put my file number, date of application, visa class and the office processing the application.

 

Stacey xx

[ali]

Well said Gill - nothing I can add really.

 

Ali x

[Guest Gollywobbler]

Hi Stacey, Ali & Watersports

 

I banged out my earlier reply in a rush in the office. Reading it over, there are a couple of further points:

 

Watersports, I suggest you have a look at Forms 26 & 160, or you won't understand this post. The forms are here:

 

http://www.uk.embassy.gov.au/lhlh/Visas%5fand%5fMigration.html

 

Click on the link to the health stuff at the bottom of the web-page.

 

You actually have to complete about half of form 26 yourself anyway. If anyone in the family is taking any drugs, it is best to write down the generic name of the drug and the dosage because the brand-names would mean nothing to the MOC out in Oz. An Agent would have no way of knowing which drugs you are taking or what operations you might have had. So whilst you are filling all that in, it is not rocket-science to recite the visa-stuff yourself as well.

 

The Panel Doctor sends the meds off for you. They are not valid - and will not be accepted - unless they have been received direct from the PD. Usually the PDs' secretaries are pretty good and work out where to send the meds to by themselves. Some of them are Jobsworths though and expect the applicant to do that bit for them.

 

Where to get the PD to send the meds to depends on which visa has been applied for. With most of the skilled visas, the meds are processed by the Local Health Clearance Unit (LCU) in Sydney. Please see here:

 

http://www.immi.gov.au/contacts/australia/processing-centres/lcu-sydney.htm

 

However it is important to check the list of visas that the LCU does the meds for. They do not handle Parent-medicals for instance. Those are dealt with by the POPC (Perth Offshore Parents Centre.) I've heard of PDs sending Parent meds to the LCU. The LCU merely send them to Perth, which wastes time.

 

With my mother's Parent-meds, the PD was an Ozzie anyway, but I filled in the box about where the meds were to be sent, to avoid any potential cock-up with that bit.

 

We actually had Mum's meds done before making the visa-application, because she is disabled we wanted to ask a Panel Doctor for an opinion before deciding whether to risk £750 or so on the application fee. So we didn't have an application reference number at that stage.

 

The PD was encouraging (and he turned out to be right.) So we made the application and I should think that the application & the meds probably reached the POPC on about the same day. I sent a covering letter with the application, informing them that the meds were on their way from the PD.

 

They managed to link Mum's application and her meds without any problems at all. However, the POPC only grant a total of 4,250 visas a year, so they only handle a very small number of meds-files compared to the sheer volume of throughput at the LCU.

 

With the LCU - and with the fact that the handling of skilled applications is far more impersonal and far more of a conveyor-belt than the style used by the POPC - I think I would definitely wait for an application reference number before releasing anything to the LCU.

 

Once done, there is no point in asking the Panel Doctor to sit on the meds. He is obliged to date the meds once he gets the results of the HIV test from the lab (the results take 7-10 days to be returned to the PD) so once the PD has dated them, he might as well send them off. You can then pester the LCU till you get confirmation that the meds have been processed and cleared.

 

I'd recommend copying Stacey.

 

Cheers

 

Gill

[Guest jordan]

Thankyou Gill i will, Many thanks.

 

Stacey xx

[ali]

If you or any member of your family have had any specialist investigations you need to put these on the form and also get copies of any letters relating to the condition from either the hospital or your GP, which state what has been done and also the prognosis.

 

EG., I knew when I had my medical that there my routine urine test would show that I had blood in my urine which is a long standing condition of unknown origin. It has been investigated and nothing was detected and I received no treatment. I got copies of the letters sent to my GP by the consultant and the GP charged me 35p per copy.

 

My son, was admitted very briefly to hospital last year, but had to be on antibiotics for several months and have a renal scan, he is also waiting for a rountine operation. The consultant at the childrens clinic gave me copies of letters for nothing.

 

You need to take all things like this to your medical, so that the panel doctor can enclose them with your medical, otherwise you may be asked to undergo investigations by the docs in Australia before they clear your medicals causing unnecessary delays.

 

Ali x

[Guest Watersports]

Thanks Gill - that was really indepth and so helpful!