Are the Health Assessment Team and Medical Assessors the same thing?

[gclamb]

My partner has received an email saying his medical is being passed to the Health Assessment Team.

Another person in a post said they had an email saying 'The Health Assessment Team are not satisfied and have referred your medical to the Medical Assessors'.

This makes me think they aren't the same thing? Just wondering what is the difference, if so?

Thanks!

[nick_nav]

Something similar happened to me before year ago with my app. When I called the called the contact center, the guy said medicals has been cleared and no further action required, but then when I called the immigration officer, she said it failed ASH and she was to busy to forward a detailed response to me.. So I guess best way might be to contact your case officer directly. in only the case officer one can trust.

[gclamb]

How do you know who your case officer is? I've never been told. I know it has one though.

[EGoodhue]

My partner has received an email saying his medical is being passed to the Health Assessment Team.

Another person in a post said they had an email saying 'The Health Assessment Team are not satisfied and have referred your medical to the Medical Assessors'.

This makes me think they aren't the same thing? Just wondering what is the difference, if so?

Thanks!

The Health Assessment Team (or HAT) are an internal INZ team who check medicals which have been identified as needing further checking, due to the physisican who did the medical flagging up some potential issues, even if they are only very minor issues. INZ then has internal policy for which medicals the HAT then refer on to the Medical Assessor, or which medicals are ok to not need a Medical Assessor (MA) referral and can go on to the processing branch to await allocation to an Immigration Officer straight away. Medical Assessors (MA) are a third party, external to INZ, usually doctors or other medical professionals (sometimes retired) who can give medical opinions on the likelihood of the medical issues flagged up in an applicants medical to not meet the health instructions that all applicants need to meet (ie. not endangering public health, not likely to cost the health system a lot of money, etc.). So yes, the MA and the HAT are quite different things.