WorkSafe physiotherapy and WorkCover physiotherapy: claims, reports and fee schedules by scheme

WorkSafe physiotherapy is physiotherapy for a workplace injury claim, paid for by a statutory compensation scheme rather than by the patient or a health insurer. The rules come from the scheme, not from the profession, and they differ by state and province even where the name on the door looks the same. Four questions decide whether you get paid: do you need approval before you treat, which report is due and when, which fee schedule applies, and how long the scheme will fund care. This page answers them scheme by scheme, from each scheme's own current provider documents, read on 27 October 2026. Where a scheme's own documents would not open to us that day, the page names that scheme and tells you what to read instead.

Ontario and New Zealand already have guides of their own on this site, so each gets a sentence and a link here rather than a second telling. For workers comp physical therapy in the USA the picture is different again, because there is no single national scheme to describe. No fee amount appears anywhere on this page, and the section on fee schedules explains why that is the right answer rather than a gap.

What is WorkSafe physiotherapy?

It is the general name for physiotherapy funded by a work injury compensation scheme, and it covers several different schemes at once. WorkSafe Victoria in Australia, WorkSafeBC in Canada, WorkSafe Queensland alongside WorkCover Queensland, icare in New South Wales, WSIB in Ontario, ACC in New Zealand, and fifty state systems in the USA. What clinics ask about is the same everywhere: the fee schedule, the initial report, the extension report, the discharge report, the management plan and the codes.

What makes it unlike private work is that the payer sets the clinical administration as well as the price. A scheme can require a plan on its own form, inside a stated number of visits, and withhold the block fee if the plan arrives late. It can also refuse to pay for treatment that falls outside the clinical framework it has adopted, which is a payment rule rather than a clinical opinion about your patient.

Before the first appointment, confirm the claim number and its status, and write the authorization details in the record. That habit protects a clinic under every scheme on this page. The scheme decides what it funds from what is in the file, and what is missing from the file counts against the claim as surely as what is in it.

WorkCover physiotherapy and WorkSafe Victoria in Australia

Victoria is the clearest published example, and it is unusual in a way worth knowing. Its Early Intervention Physiotherapy Framework policy, reviewed on 30 September 2026, states that physiotherapy services can be provided without prior approval from WorkSafe and without a referral from a medical practitioner. You can start treating, which is not true of every Australian scheme.

The timings are in the same policy. An initial AHRMP, the plan the policy requires, has to be completed and submitted to WorkSafe within the first five consultations. The early intervention extended consultation can be billed twice within the first seven months from the date of injury, and standard consultations run for a period of seven months from the worker's date of injury. For workers still receiving physiotherapy at nine months from the date of injury there is a treatment review. Where WorkSafe asks you for information, the policy gives you 14 days to provide it.

The policy is equally clear about what is not paid. Services not required as a result of the worker's accepted injury or illness, and treatment and services that do not align with the Clinical Framework the scheme adopts. Read those two exclusions as a pair: the first is about causation and the second is about the kind of care, and a claim can fail on either.

Registration is separate from the claim. WorkSafe Victoria's provider registration page asks for current registration with the Physiotherapy Board of Australia under AHPRA, kept active at all times, at least 1 million Australian dollars of professional indemnity insurance held at all times, and a registration application form giving your board registration number. WorkSafe issues a provider number for invoicing, and if you are registered with Medicare your Medicare number is used as the provider number instead. That page was last reviewed on 23 July 2022, which is old enough to check against the scheme before you rely on it. Its physiotherapy provider page carries a current note that all new and existing EIPF registrations are automatically extended to 1 November 2027.

Queensland and New South Wales are both in the section on what we could not read, so do not carry a Victorian rule across a state border. Approval before treatment is the clause to check first in any scheme, because it is the one that decides whether the sessions you have already delivered will be paid for. Assuming Victoria's answer applies elsewhere is how a clinic ends up treating for nothing.

WorkSafeBC in British Columbia: a contract, a window and two reports

British Columbia starts with a contract. WorkSafeBC states that to provide physiotherapy services for musculoskeletal or orthopedic injuries you must have a contract with WorkSafeBC, and its page explains how to become a contracted provider if you do not hold one. Without that contract the rest of the process does not apply to you.

There is a window on the front end. You can carry out an initial assessment within 60 days of the injury for a worker with an accepted or pending claim, and WorkSafeBC says to check that the claim is accepted before providing treatment beyond that assessment. The treatment guidelines sit in its Physiotherapy Services Reference Manual rather than on the page itself.

Reporting runs on two forms, the Physiotherapy Treatment and Post-Surgical Initial Report (83D555) and the Physiotherapy Treatment Report (83D665). Invoices go through Teleplan or My Provider Services, and reports follow the route your invoice took, with reports that are not linked to an invoice going through the document uploader. When we read the page on 27 October 2026, its related documents included a Physiotherapy Services Agreement and Fee Schedule dated 23 March 2026 and bulletins published in April 2026.

One caution on the forms, because it is the kind of detail that goes stale quietly. Other pages and third-party billing guides list a different set of report form numbers, including an extension request and a discharge or interrupt report. Take the form list from WorkSafeBC's own current page for the service you deliver, not from a summary, and not from this page if the date above is no longer recent.

Where is the WorkSafe physiotherapy fee schedule?

Each scheme publishes its own, and each republishes it on its own cycle, which is the whole reason this page prints no amounts.

Scheme	Current schedule as read on 27 October 2026
WorkSafe Victoria	Early intervention physiotherapy framework fee schedule 2026, applying from 1 October 2026, published 30 September 2026, issued as a three page PDF
WorkSafeBC	Physiotherapy Fee Schedule, with separate schedules for standard and post-surgical, neurological and home physiotherapy; the agreement and schedule in its related documents was dated 23 March 2026
WSIB Ontario	Fee schedule: physiotherapy, with programs of care paid as block fees; see the WSIB guide below
ACC New Zealand	Allied Health Services contract rates; see the ACC guide below

Take every figure from the scheme's own current schedule, with its effective date, and attribute it to that scheme and that year. Never average across schemes, and never quote one scheme's rate as a benchmark for another, because the item definitions differ as much as the amounts do. Check the effective date rather than the file name, too: superseded scales of charges sit online for years and still come up first in a search, which is how a clinic ends up invoicing against a schedule that was replaced two cycles ago.

Victoria's 2026 schedule is a case in point for what a careful page can and cannot tell you. The amounts are inside the PDF rather than on the web page, so we can confirm which document is current, what it covers and when it took effect, and we send you to it for the numbers. The item categories it lists include the initial consultation, the early intervention extended consultation, the standard consultation, the certificate of capacity, post-operative and restricted consultations, workplace assessment, travel with prior approval, aquatic physiotherapy, group consultation, return to work case conference and requests for information.

Which scheme documents could we not read?

Four, and naming them is more use than guessing at their contents.

WorkSafe Queensland and WorkCover Queensland, whose table of costs for physiotherapy is one of the documents Australian clinics search for by name: worksafe.qld.gov.au refused our request on 27 October 2026. icare New South Wales also refused us that day. So did the State Insurance Regulatory Authority, which is the body that actually matters in New South Wales, because SIRA makes the fees orders and the practice requirements that icare and the other insurers pay against, and those orders are published as PDFs. For New South Wales, read the current physiotherapy, chiropractic and osteopathy fees and practice requirements order on SIRA's own site, and check its effective date: versions from several past years are still online and still turn up in search.

New Zealand is a different case. ACC's site answered us but returned a shell rather than a document, so nothing new about ACC is stated here. Our ACC physiotherapy guide was written from ACC material and carries its own dated references, including the contract rules for each visit, prior approval and what the patient pays.

Ontario is covered in full on the WSIB physiotherapy guide: Form 8, the musculoskeletal program of care in two four-week blocks, the report deadlines and how block fees are paid. Read that page rather than a summary of it here. The two other Canadian funding routes a work-injury patient may also hold are in the OHIP physiotherapy guide and the extended health benefits guide.

How does workers comp physical therapy work in the USA?

There is no single answer, because there is no single scheme. The US Department of Labor's own page for state workers' compensation points you to the appropriate official in each state and territory, and the agencies it lists are not even the same kind of body: labor departments in some states, industrial commissions in others, insurance departments elsewhere. Its own four programs, for federal employees, nuclear weapons workers, coal mine workers, and longshore and Defense Base Act workers, sit alongside the state systems rather than above them.

So the fee schedule and the treatment rules are state law. California is the most documented example and a good one to read even if you practice elsewhere. Its Division of Workers' Compensation describes the Medical Treatment Utilization Schedule as a set of regulations in title 8 of the California Code of Regulations, sections 9792.20 through 9792.27.23. The adopted guidelines are presumed correct on the issue of the extent and scope of medical treatment, and that presumption can be rebutted where the injury is not addressed by a guideline, or where the treating physician disagrees with a recommendation and sets out to rebut it. The schedule adopts American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine guidelines by body region and condition, includes a drug formulary built on them, and leaves some topics, acupuncture and postoperative rehabilitation among them, without a standalone guideline.

A caution about the guidelines themselves. The ACOEM guidelines, and the other proprietary treatment guidelines several states adopt, are behind a paywall, so a page that quotes a recommendation or a visit count from them without having read them is guessing. Keep the referral question separate from the payment question as well: what your state practice act allows is covered in the direct access guide, and what a workers' compensation payer will authorize is decided by the scheme, not by the practice act.

What a work injury claim does not change

A compensation claim changes who pays. It does not change the clinical judgement about whether this patient should be in front of you at all.

Some injuries need urgent medical assessment rather than a physiotherapy appointment, and an open claim is never a reason to wait. If you are the clinician, red flags in physiotherapy screening lists the screening questions and the thresholds for referring on, and each condition page on this site carries the full warning list for its body area, for example low back pain. If you are the injured worker and something on those lists describes you, get medical help first and sort the claim afterwards.

A scheme may also require you to report a clinical concern to it, on top of acting on that concern. Ontario's WSIB is the documented example on this site, and the duty there is additional to sending the worker for urgent care rather than a substitute for it. Check whether your own scheme has an equivalent route, and never let the call replace the referral.

Home exercise between scheme-funded visits

Scheme-funded care is usually short, and the supervised sessions are a small part of the recovery. Victoria funds a defined run of consultations and then reviews; British Columbia works from an assessment and a treatment report. In both, most of the rehabilitation happens between appointments, which is why the home program belongs in the plan you submit rather than in a leaflet handed over at the door. How to write a home exercise program covers choosing the exercises and setting the dose, and outcome measures covers measuring the change you will have to report.

PocketPhysio is built for that gap. Build the worker's program from the exercise library, set sets, reps and any hold time, and add your own cue where it helps. They open each exercise as a video with a voice guide talking them through it. Send it as a link, a text or an email, or let it land in their Pocket Physio Care patient app, and WhatsApp is there if they prefer it. At the next visit you progress what you sent, which is also what a scheme's progress report is asking you to show.

Keep the dose in the record in the same words you sent it. A report that says exercise was prescribed is weaker than one that says what, how much and how often, and the second is no more work if the program was built once and sent.

The short version

WorkSafe physiotherapy means the scheme sets the clinical administration as well as the fee, and the scheme differs by state and province. In Victoria you may treat without prior approval or a medical referral, the initial AHRMP is due within five consultations, standard consultations run for seven months from the date of injury, there is a review at nine months, and information requests carry a 14 day deadline. Provider registration there needs current Physiotherapy Board of Australia registration and at least 1 million Australian dollars of indemnity insurance.

In British Columbia you need a contract with WorkSafeBC, you may assess within 60 days of injury on an accepted or pending claim, and you check acceptance before treating further. Fee schedules belong to each scheme, carry an effective date and are republished annually, so take every amount from the current document and never from a summary. Queensland, icare and SIRA all refused our requests on 27 October 2026, so read those at source. Ontario and New Zealand are covered in full on the WSIB and ACC guides. In the USA there is no national scheme: the state agency, its fee schedule and its adopted treatment guidelines decide, and California's regulations are the most readable worked example.

References

1. WorkSafe Victoria. Physiotherapy: fees, policies and information for physiotherapy providers, including the automatic extension of EIPF registrations to 1 November 2027. Reviewed 8 October 2026. Read 27 October 2026. https://www.worksafe.vic.gov.au/physiotherapy
2. WorkSafe Victoria. Physiotherapy: register as a provider. Reviewed 23 July 2022. Read 27 October 2026. https://www.worksafe.vic.gov.au/physiotherapy-register-provider
3. WorkSafe Victoria. Early Intervention Physiotherapy Framework (EIPF) policy. Reviewed 30 September 2026. Read 27 October 2026. https://www.worksafe.vic.gov.au/early-intervention-physiotherapy-framework-eipf-policy
4. WorkSafe Victoria. Early intervention physiotherapy framework (EIPF) fee schedule 2026, applying from 1 October 2026, published 30 September 2026. Read 27 October 2026. https://www.worksafe.vic.gov.au/resources/early-intervention-physiotherapy-framework-eipf-fee-schedule-2026
5. WorkSafeBC. Musculoskeletal physiotherapy services (contracted): the contract requirement, the 60 day initial assessment window, forms 83D555 and 83D665, and invoicing through Teleplan or My Provider Services. Related Physiotherapy Services Agreement and Fee Schedule dated 23 March 2026. Read 27 October 2026. https://www.worksafebc.com/en/health-care-providers/provider-types/physiotherapists/musculoskeletal-physiotherapy-services
6. State of California, Department of Industrial Relations, Division of Workers' Compensation. Medical Treatment Utilization Schedule: title 8, California Code of Regulations, sections 9792.20 to 9792.27.23, and the adopted ACOEM guidelines. Read 27 October 2026. https://www.dir.ca.gov/dwc/MTUS/MTUS.html
7. United States Department of Labor, Office of Workers' Compensation Programs. State workers' compensation officials, and the four federal OWCP programs. Read 27 October 2026. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/owcp/wc

Written and checked by the PocketPhysio editorial team. Last updated 2026-10-27.