The Department of Veterans’ Affairs publishes how long claims take. The number most people quote is the total. The number worth looking at is the one underneath it.
For initial liability claims received in the last twelve months, DVA reports an average processing time of 136 days. That splits into 94 days with DVA doing the work, and 42 days waiting for information from somewhere else.
Forty-two days. Nearly a third of the wait, and none of it is anyone assessing anything. It is a file sitting still while a record is chased from a base, a clinic or a hospital.
Since 1 July 2026 that gap matters more than it used to, because there is now a path where a claim can be decided in under two weeks instead of 136 days. What separates the two is almost entirely whether your paperwork was ready on the day you lodged.
This is a guide to getting that paperwork together. It is not advice about your claim, and I will come back to that distinction because it matters.
Disclosure before we start: I am a doctor, and I founded exora, which is software for holding your own health record. It appears once, near the end. Everything before it works regardless of what you use, including a cardboard box.
What changed on 1 July 2026
Two things, and both affect what you need to hand over.
Three laws became one. Veterans’ claims used to run under three separate Acts. From 1 July 2026, new compensation and rehabilitation claims can no longer be lodged under the Veterans’ Entitlements Act or the DRCA. Everything lodged from that date is assessed under the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act, no matter when the injury or illness happened. Claims already lodged before 1 July keep being processed under the old Acts.
If you are reading older guides written by advocates or law firms, check the date. A lot of what is online describes the three-Act system.
Presumptive liability arrived. This is the bigger change for most people. For a list of conditions, DVA can now accept automatically that your condition is service-related, without you having to prove the link.
The conditions covered from 1 July 2026 include:
- 20 cancers for ADF firefighters.
- 30 or more conditions for ADF firefighters who served at Point Cook between 1957 and 1986.
- 30 or more conditions for F-111 deseal/reseal workers.
- 40 or more conditions linked to specific workplace exposures.
- 80 or more common service-related conditions, including some that develop as a result of another accepted condition.
- Some conditions linked to veterans who have experienced abuse.
You do not apply for this separately. If your claim qualifies, it is assessed that way automatically. Some conditions still require a particular type or length of service, or for the condition to have started within a certain time.
The two-week path, and what it depends on
Here is the part that connects the change to your filing cabinet. DVA says that from 1 July 2026, a claim for an eligible presumptive condition may be decided in less than two weeks if you:
- are claiming a condition on the presumptive list,
- provide a confirmed diagnosis from an appropriately qualified practitioner for each condition, and
- submit all required information when you lodge.
DVA’s own words on what happens then: if those requirements are met, it “may determine your presumptive liability conditions claim without seeking further evidence.”
Read that against the 42 days. The whole delay is DVA asking someone else for something. A claim that arrives complete never starts that clock.
Under two weeks against an average of 136 days is not a small difference. It is the difference between having your records together and not.
Where your records actually are
This is the part almost nobody explains properly, and it is the reason the chase takes so long. Your medical history is split between three different keepers, and none of them has all of it.
1. DVA has only what it has already been given
This surprises people. DVA states it plainly: “DVA only holds the records that have previously been provided to us, DVA does not hold any information about your service that you have not consented to us receiving.”
So if you have never claimed before, DVA may hold very little. If you have claimed several times over the years, it may hold a great deal - old claims, assessments, determination letters, impairment reports, and whatever medical records were sent in at the time.
2. Defence has your service record
Your full service history and your service medical records sit with the Department of Defence, not DVA. For those, DVA points you to Defence directly, on 1800 DEFENCE (1800 333 362). Defence runs its own personal information request process.
A summary of your service history is also visible in MyService, the online portal you use through myGov. A summary is not the record.
3. Your civilian doctors have the rest
Every GP you have seen since discharge. The specialist you saw once in 2014. The hospital that did the scan. Neither DVA nor Defence has any of this unless someone sent it to them.
For most veterans this is the largest and most scattered part, and the part that takes longest, because it means contacting practices individually - some of which have closed, merged or changed systems since you were there. You have a right to your records from any of them under the Privacy Act, which is worth knowing before you ring. We have written separately about what that right actually covers.
How to request each one
From DVA: a personal information request. This is free, and DVA aims to answer within 30 days. There is a webform, or you can email or post an information access form. You will need two certified proof-of-identity documents, one primary and one secondary.
It is deliberately lighter than a Freedom of Information request - no formal written application, less process, and DVA describes it as the simpler, cheaper and faster option. The one thing to know: there is no right of review. If what comes back is not enough, an FOI request is the formal route.
A request can cover medical and service records DVA holds, your service summary, payment history, past claims and DVA’s assessments of them, determination letters, impairment reports, and records of contact.
From Defence: a separate request, through Defence’s own process, starting with 1800 DEFENCE.
From your doctors: ask each practice for a copy of your records. Most will have a form. Some charge a reasonable fee for the copying.
One correction worth making, because it circulates: DVA does not simply collect all of this for you in the background. It may ask your consent to request your information from other organisations, such as Defence or your practitioners. That is a request that needs your say-so, not something that happens automatically.
What DVA actually needs from you
The first step in DVA’s own claim process is blunt: a qualified health professional must confirm each condition you are claiming. Not a suspicion, not a symptom you have lived with for years. A diagnosis, per condition.
That is a job for your GP or specialist, and it is worth booking properly rather than raising it at the end of an appointment about something else. Bring what you have. A doctor who can see the history is in a much better position than one being asked to remember a knee you mentioned in 2019.
DVA’s advice for making a claim run smoothly is three lines long:
- Provide complete and accurate information.
- Include any relevant supporting information, reports or documents.
- Respond quickly to DVA requests.
All three are easier when your records are in one place rather than four.
If your condition is not on the presumptive list
Then the claim goes through the standard assessment, which usually means applying something called a Statement of Principles. These are legal instruments written by the Repatriation Medical Authority, and they list the factors that can connect a particular condition to service. DVA’s description: “In order for a claim to succeed at least one of the SoP factors must be related to service.”
There are two Statements of Principles for every condition, because operational service and other service are held to different standards of proof. They are published on the Repatriation Medical Authority’s website.
Working out which factors apply to you is genuinely difficult, and it is the reason trained advocates exist. Which brings us to the most useful thing in this article.
Free help exists, and you should use it
There is a paid industry around DVA claims. There is also a free one, and it is not the lesser option.
Ex-Service Organisation advocates are trained through the Advocacy Training and Development Program, carry professional indemnity insurance, work to a code of ethics, and are independent of DVA. Many are veterans themselves. They can help prepare and lodge a claim through MyService, request reviews, appeal decisions, and connect you to housing, rehabilitation and transition support. DVA lists this as free advocacy support.
DVA also runs its own supports:
- Claims Lodgement Assistant - free personalised help from trained DVA staff, at CLA@dva.gov.au.
- Veterans’ Access Network offices - in-person help lodging a claim.
- 1800 VETERAN (1800 838 372) - claims and general enquiries, weekdays 8am to 5pm AEST.
An advocate’s job is much easier when you arrive with your records already gathered. That is the division of labour worth aiming for: you bring the documents, they bring the expertise about what the documents mean.
You may not have to wait for treatment
Two things exist that many veterans do not know about. Provisional access to medical treatment can cover treatment for one of 20 specified conditions while your MRCA claim is being assessed. And non-liability health care covers mental health treatment, and treatment for cancer and pulmonary tuberculosis, without the condition having to be accepted as service-related at all.
If you are unwell now and your claim is months off, ask about both.
Why you only want to do this once
Here is the thing that makes this different from most paperwork.
In the last twelve months DVA received 29,033 initial liability claims from 20,079 veterans, covering 94,087 separate conditions. Divide those out: the average veteran lodging a claim is claiming four or five conditions, and many people lodge again years later as something else develops or worsens.
Every one of those claims draws on the same underlying history. The same service record. The same GP notes. The same scans.
So the records you gather for this claim are the records you will need for the next one, and the one after that. Put them back in a box and you will chase all of it again - usually while unwell, possibly a decade later, from practices that have since closed.
Gather it once. Keep it somewhere you can find it. That single decision is worth more than any technique for filling in a form.
Where exora fits, and where it does not
Everything above works with a scanner and a filing cabinet, and a filing cabinet has never once lost your data to a company going under. If that is your system, it is a real system.
I built exora for the part that a filing cabinet does badly. You upload what you get back: the large scanned bundle from DVA, the Defence record, photographs of the paper from your GP. It reads them into one profile - conditions, medicines, operations, test results, immunisations - each with a date. And each one stays linked to the page of the document it came from. So when a claim or a doctor asks when something was first recorded, you can find it and show the source.
It can also be handed to your GP or your advocate from any browser, with nothing for them to install, and the access ends when you end it.
Now the important part, and I want to be direct about it.
exora does not help you win a claim. It does not lodge claims, it does not connect to MyService, it does not tell you which conditions to claim, and it deliberately does not match your history against the Statements of Principles. That is advocacy and legal judgement, it belongs to trained advocates and your doctors, and a health record company guessing at it would be doing you a disservice dressed up as a feature.
What it does is hold your record so that you, your doctor and your advocate are all looking at the same complete history. The claim is their work. The evidence is yours.
If any of this is hard going
Gathering years of medical history means reading years of medical history, and for some people that is not a filing exercise. If it brings things up, Open Arms - Veterans and Families Counselling is free, confidential, and available 24 hours a day on 1800 011 046. You do not need an accepted claim, or any claim, to use it.
The short version
DVA’s average claim takes 136 days and 42 of those are spent waiting on records. Since 1 July 2026 some claims can be decided in under two weeks if everything arrives complete. Your history sits in three places: DVA holds only what it has been given, Defence holds your service record, and your civilian doctors hold the rest. A personal information request to DVA is free and takes about 30 days; Defence is a separate request on 1800 DEFENCE; your doctors you contact yourself. You need a diagnosis from a qualified practitioner for every condition you claim. Free, trained, insured advocates will help you with the claim itself, and you should let them. And whatever you use to keep it all - gather it once, because you will need it again.
