Hospital

The Mental Health Waiver has been introduced by the Australian Government to help provide easier access to inpatient psychiatric care for private health insurance customers.

If a person is on a hospital policy that provides restricted benefits for psychiatric care, then to access higher benefits they’d usually have to upgrade their policy and complete a two month waiting period.

The Mental Health Waiver allows a person to upgrade cover to a policy that covers private psychiatric care without having to serve an additional waiting period. People must have served an initial 2 month waiting period on any level of hospital cover before an admission will be covered.

This waiver can be used at any time. However, it can be used only once in a person's lifetime.

It’s important to know that health.com.au does not offer full private cover for psychiatric admissions, as we do not offer any ‘Gold’ tier Hospital products.

If you hold appropriate cover with health.com.au, we will cover a psychiatric admission at the restricted level. This means that the minimum, default government rates will be paid towards the admission, and we’ll cover you only as a private patient in a public facility.

Going to a private facility without adequate cover will likely result in large out of pocket costs, so it’s best to find appropriate cover that will pay towards a private admission.

Please get in touch with our friendly customer service team, who’ll be happy to help you with the options available.