DVA Physiotherapy Fees: The 2026 Fee Schedule and Your Costs

What DVA Physiotherapy Fees Are

A DVA fee is the price DVA has set for one physio service. The money goes to the provider. It is not a price list for you.

The Short Version

Four facts sum up physio fees for cardholders:

• DVA now pays the physiotherapist $77.10 per standard clinic consult
• A clinic that takes your card cannot add a gap fee
• One referral covers as many as 12 sessions, and your usual GP can renew it
• DVA's May 2026 Budget sheet gives $110 as the standard fee from July 2027

Each point has conditions. The sections below give the source for each one.

What the Clinic Bills and What You Pay

For a cardholder whose card covers the treatment, the cost at the counter should be nil. Each service on DVA's list has an item code and a dollar amount. After your session, the physiotherapist bills that item to DVA.

DVA's rules for physiotherapists say a provider who takes your card agrees to treat that amount as payment in full. The same rules bar a "gap" fee on top. So the schedule shows what the clinic receives.

Where the Amounts Come From

DVA lists the fees for each profession on its fee schedules page for dental and allied health. A DVA notice from December 2025 says the schedules on its website are the ones to rely on for current fees.

If a clinic price list or another site shows a different figure, go by DVA's schedule.

DVA's general notes are a download on its fees and guidelines page. They say fees for most provider types are indexed once a year where Government policy allows. The notes written for physiotherapists sit on that page too.

DVA put out a new physio schedule twice in 2026. The first began in January and the second in July.

Which Cardholders the Fees Cover

These fees may be paid for two kinds of cardholder whose need has been clinically assessed. DVA's physiotherapy page names the cards:

• White Card (formally the Veteran Card - Specific Conditions), where the physio treats a condition accepted under that card
• Gold Card, formally the Veteran Card - All Conditions

How veterans come to hold each card is in our Gold Card guide and our White Card explainer. For what a physio session can involve, see our guide to DVA physio services.

Is your claim still with DVA? A DVA scheme called Provisional Access to Medical Treatment, or PAMT, may fund care for 20 listed conditions before a decision.

That includes allied health, and my PAMT guide sets out who qualifies.

The Current DVA Physio Fee Schedule, Item by Item

Here is the DVA physio fee schedule in everyday words. The figures come from DVA's July 2026 schedule for physiotherapists. No amount below includes GST.

Clinic, Home and Telehealth Visits

The standard clinic fee is $2.00 higher than on DVA's schedule that began in January 2026. That sum is mine, worked out from the two schedules.

The extended item has a narrow use. DVA's schedule keeps it for two cases:

• Two acute problems in areas that are not related
• An acute problem treated while a chronic one still needs care

It is not a longer booking for one sore back.

Home visits need a genuine reason, for example where you cannot travel. Where one applies, The physiotherapist may be paid as well for kilometres travelled. That payment is not a charge to you.

Telehealth has limits as well. DVA's telehealth rules allow video or phone for follow-up consults. A first or extended consult is done in person unless DVA approves otherwise.

Phone is for when video is not available. Group, pool and specialty sessions have no telehealth item, so they are done in person.

Group, Pool and Specialty Sessions

The group and pool fees already include entry to the pool or gym. DVA's notes for physiotherapists do not let a clinic pass pool or gym membership costs on to you.

The three specialty items are not counted in the cycle of 12. Not every physio can bill them. It takes recognised postgraduate training in the specialty.

Two of them, pelvic health and vestibular, no longer carry a cost approval step. A DVA notice on prior approval dates that change to the start of January 2026.

Reports, Consumables and Aids

For splints, aids and consumables, your physio claims what the item cost on the invoice, up to the ceiling. DVA's guidance on consumables and aids excludes items you would pick up at a chemist or the shops to manage a condition yourself. It gives heat and cold packs as an example.

Larger gear is handled another way. DVA supplies it through its program for rehabilitation appliances, known as RAP. We cover that program in our RAP guide.

The schedule also lists case conference items for meetings a GP organises. They run from $58.50 to $166.85, depending on length.

Exercise Physiology Fees for Comparison

Exercise physiology has its own schedule on the fee schedules page linked above. It began when the physio one did. On it, a first or follow-up clinic consult is $77.10 and a first consult at home is $82.75.

DVA's notes for physiotherapists set a same-day rule. You cannot have a physio consult and an exercise physiology session on the one day for one condition. That service has its own page, our DVA exercise physiology guide.

Hospital and Aged Care Visits

The schedule has separate items for private hospitals, public hospitals and aged care homes. Most are set at the standard clinic fee. A first consult for the first client seen at a facility is paid at the same rate as a first consult at home.

Each setting carries a condition in the schedule:

• Private hospital: DVA pays only where its hospital contract leaves the service out
• Public hospital: DVA funds physio only as an exception, with its approval given beforehand
• Aged care home: DVA pays only where the home is not already funded for that physio

What You Pay When the Card Covers You

For treatment your card covers, from a clinic that takes the card, you should not get a bill. A few costs can still fall to you.

No Gap Fee When the Card Is Accepted

DVA's advice on Veteran Card acceptance is plain. Once a clinic accepts your card, it cannot ask you for a gap fee. DVA also tells cardholders not to pay the physiotherapist directly, because DVA pays the clinic for you.

DVA wants to hear from you if a physio bill turns up. Use MyService, phone 1800 VETERAN (1800 838 372) or go in person to an office of the Veterans' Access Network.

Charges That Can Still Land on You

Five costs can fall outside what DVA pays:

• Missed appointments: DVA's notes say a missed session is not paid for, so a clinic's usual no-show fee is yours
• A physio who does not take the card: DVA suggests asking first whether the clinic takes the card as payment in full
• A gym membership or a general exercise program: DVA's physiotherapy page says neither card pays for these
• Massage on its own: DVA's list of funded health services says massage is paid for only within a physio, chiropractic or osteopathic consult
• Physio outside a White Card's conditions: That card pays only for its accepted conditions

A Tip From My Claims Work

Here is a tip from my own work on claims. If a physio bill arrives and your card is white, look at the card before the fee. The thing to find out is whether the sore knee or back is an accepted condition yet.

Choosing Medicare or Private Cover Instead

You may choose Medicare or your own health cover for a session instead of the card. DVA's rule on that choice is that a service another payer has already covered, even partly, gets no DVA funding. That covers Medicare, a health fund and compensation paid by someone else.

Getting Money Back After You Paid

DVA has a refund path known as MEPI, short for Medical Expenses Privately Incurred. Applicants need one of the two cards.

MEPI may look at reasonable costs you paid before DVA told you that you were eligible. That period starts on your date of eligibility. For later costs, DVA will consider a refund only where circumstances are exceptional.

Further visits to a clinic that will not take the card are not refunded by DVA. The same narrow exception applies. DVA's list of costs it will not refund includes:

• Cancellation fees
• Pool entry and gym memberships
• Charges for reports or letters

Keep itemised receipts for the application. DVA says its MEPI webform is the quickest route.

How the Fee Rules Shape Your Treatment

The schedule also limits how often a provider can bill each item. Those limits drive your referrals, reports and approvals.

Who Can Write the Referral

DVA pays for physio only on a referral. For a first cycle, four kinds of referrer are accepted under DVA's rules for physiotherapists. They are a hospital discharge planner, a doctor treating you in hospital, a medical specialist and a GP.

DVA's telehealth page adds a limit. A referral from an online GP service is valid only if that service gives you regular care or has seen you in person.

Every later cycle needs a referral written by your usual GP.

How One Cycle Runs

DVA's treatment cycle caps one referral at 12 sessions. Any sessions left unused lapse after a year.

DVA's general notes rule out payment for a session given once a referral has run out. So check its date and the session count ahead of each booking.

DVA sets no ceiling on how many cycles a veteran has. Your usual GP may write another referral while treatment stays clinically necessary. Renewals are covered in my cycle rules guide.

DVA's rules for physiotherapists add one more limit. For any one condition, a referral lets you see a physio, an osteopath or a chiropractor, but only one of the three.

What the Closing Report Does

As a cycle closes, your physiotherapist writes a closing report. DVA's outline of the cycle says it goes to your usual GP, who then judges whether another cycle is needed. The physio can bill it once per cycle, under item PH90.

The report can go in early, once eight sessions are done. DVA's notes allow that only where you, your physiotherapist and your usual GP agree it is needed. The rest of that cycle's sessions are still meant to be delivered before the next one begins.

If your next referral is running late, ask your physio if the report has reached your GP.

TPI on a Gold Card Changes the Cycle

A number of Gold Cards carry the letters "TPI". My guide to TPI entitlements explains that rating. For physio, holders of those cards are outside the cycle.

Who else is in that group? DVA's questions and answers on the cycle say it takes in veterans on the MRCA's Special Rate Disability Pension.

A TPI cardholder still needs a referral. The treatment still has to be clinically necessary. MRCA is the 2004 Act that governs military compensation.

DVA's notes for physiotherapists say a TPI referral lasts 12 months. It can be indefinite where your usual GP writes it that way for a chronic problem. The GP then reviews it every 12 months.

When DVA Has to Approve First

A few physio services need DVA's approval before the session. Outside public hospitals, the schedule does not mark standard, group or pool sessions as needing it. Your provider asks for approval, not you.

Going by the schedule and DVA's telehealth rules, they include:

• Treatment in a public hospital
• A report or consult that DVA itself requests
• Specialty sessions beyond the yearly number in the table above
• A cast or static splint priced above the ceiling
• A first or extended consult by telehealth

A treatment that is not on the schedule needs approval too. DVA's prior approval rules for physiotherapists say DVA funds it only where the case is exceptional. It has to be backed by evidence and by a clinical reason.

DVA's notes add that a request can be refused. As a general rule, a service that needed approval and went ahead without it goes unpaid by DVA.

DVA Fees Compared With Medicare

A veteran with no card, or with a card that leaves the condition out, may look at Medicare for physio. The two systems pay in different ways.

The Medicare schedule's entry for item 10960 shows those Medicare figures. It dates the latest fee update to 1 July 2026.

Those 5 services are a shared pool. It covers every allied health item in that Medicare subgroup, not physio alone. The entry's notes raise the number to 10 for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients.

Private clinic prices are not in this table. I could not find an official source for them.

Fee Changes Due in 2027

Several changes are tied to the middle of 2027. One has already been withdrawn.

A Higher Physio Fee From July 2027

The Federal Budget for 2026-27 set aside $169.7 million across five years. The money is to lift fees across allied health. DVA's Budget notice to providers gives the start date as 1 July 2027 and lists physio among the services.

DVA's Budget information sheet gives an example. It says the standard clinic consult, item PH20, will rise to $110. The sheet quotes $75.10 as the starting fee, which was the rate before July 2026.

The sheet gives the same $110 example for a follow-up exercise physiology consult. It dates from May 2026. DVA's September notice confirms the rise but gives no amounts.

As of October 2026, no 2027 schedule is on DVA's fee schedules page. Until one appears there, the July 2026 fees stay current.

The $5,000 Yearly Limit Will Not Go Ahead

The same Budget planned a $5,000 cap on what each cardholder could spend in a year across allied health. On 21 September 2026, DVA announced that the Government had dropped the plan.

DVA's notice says eligible cardholders stay on the current arrangements. It adds that the fee rise still stands. If another site still describes that cap, look at when it was written.

The May Budget sheet also said the cycle's referral rules would be removed. DVA's September notice does not mention that part. The cycle rules described above are the ones in force today.

A Shorter Claiming Window for Providers

A provider's window to bill DVA shrinks from two years to one on 1 July 2027. DVA's page on the new claiming timeframe says the change does not affect how veterans get DVA-funded care.

Getting to Appointments and Finding a Physio

Two practical matters remain. One is the trip and the other is the search for a clinic.

Travel Costs

Trips to treatment taken since the start of July 2026 are assessed against the MRCA, whichever card you hold. DVA's page on travel expenses sets 68 cents a kilometre for a private vehicle. You can add parking and road tolls.

DVA measures the trip against the closest suitable provider. If you pick a clinic further away, DVA may not refund the whole cost. The claim steps are in my article on claiming travel.

Finding a Clinic That Takes the Card

DVA's steps for finding a provider start with healthdirect's service finder. It asks for a provider type and a postcode. A DVA provider notice from July 2026 says clinics can now show "Veteran cards accepted" on their listing.

DVA can pay a physio only where Services Australia has registered that physio as a provider for DVA. A clinic may also decline the card. DVA's September 2026 notice says the 2027 fee rise is meant to bring more providers in to treat DVA clients.

Three questions are worth asking on the first call:

• Will you bill DVA in full on my Veteran Card, with nothing extra from me?
• Do you charge for a missed or late-cancelled appointment?
• When will my GP get your report as the cycle finishes?

Where Our Claims Work Fits In

Our work is DVA claims. We charge for that work and we are independent of DVA. Treatment and fee setting sit outside our work.

That matters here because a White Card pays for physio for conditions DVA has accepted. Our team helps veterans put together initial liability claims. At that step, DVA rules on the tie between a condition and your service.

We have supported over 10,000 veterans through the DVA claims process.

Know the Fee Before Your First Session

DVA physiotherapy fees are set sums paid to your physio, with $77.10 the going rate for a standard clinic visit.

When the card covers the care and the clinic takes it, no gap should come back to you. If the condition is missing from your card, ask us how claiming for it would work.