Make a Referral

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If you are a health or aged care professional, the Make a Referral form is for you. It allows you to refer patients for an aged care assessment – to determine their eligibility for government-funded aged care services.

You can’t refer patients for a specific type of care or support, only for an assessment.

Who should use Make a Referral?

Make a Referral supports health and aged care professionals to refer patients for an assessment. It can be:

  • Hospital professionals and admin staff
  • Medical staff
  • GPs and medical specialists and Nurses
  • Aged care professional service providers
  • Community health professionals
  • Aged Care Assessment Team (ACAT) workers

If you aren’t a health care professional and want to apply for an assessment for yourself or a family member or friend please use Apply for an assessment. If you are a GP, you may also be able to use e-Referrals from within your practice management system.

What do I need?

When you complete a referral you will need to provide details about your patient or client. Please have the following information ready:

  • their Medicare or DVA details
  • their personal information, including date of birth and contact details.

How long will it take?

The Make a Referral form takes about 15 to 20 minutes to complete. However, we know you may get interrupted, so you have 60 minutes to complete the form once you begin.

After 60 minutes the form will reset – to protect the privacy of your client – and you will need to start the application again.

Tip: When completing a referral you can select ‘remember me’. If you do this, the form will prefill your contact information the next time you make a referral, to save you time.

Emergency Situations

In exceptional circumstances you may need to directly refer a client for urgent services to keep them safe, i.e. an immediate need for nursing, personal care, transport (if required within two weeks) and meals. In this circumstance, the service provider will need to refer the client to My Aged Care to assure the conduct of a holistic assessment and ongoing access to services. Referral to aged care services should NOT take the place of post-acute services.