The federal court made a decision known as NDIAvDavis in August 2022.
This decision focused around the definition of two words; ‘available’ and ‘remedy’.
In order to be eligible for NDIS funding, one criteria under the NDIA Act is that a person has impairments that are or most likely are to be permanent impairments. According to rule 5.4 under the NDIA’s becoming a participant ruling, it states: ‘‘there are no known, available and appropriate evidence-based clinical, medical or other treatments that would be likely to remedy the impairment”.
Previously, according to NDIA’s operational guidelines, the word remedy was understood to mean a treatment that would relieve someone’s impairment and that the word available meant that there were treatment options that were theoretically available.
However, the Federal Court reviewed this and have defined remedy to mean something approaching removal or cure of the impairment and available to mean what treatments an individual can in reality access.
This case and the definitions provided by the Federal Court has the potential to significantly expand the population that are eligible for NDIS support.