Defcare is the primary electronic recording medium for SRCA cases. It also provides guidance to Delegates via the 'Initial Liability Decision Support Module'. At the time of writing, the Liability Module relates only to SRCA cases, and cases relating to injuries under earlier Acts do not yet have electronic rule-base support.
For SRCA cases only, the Liability Module provides an interactive system, which asks a series of true/false questions about the case, each screen customised in response to the previous answers.
These questions, inevitably, must be cast in relatively broad terms. This Liability Handbook is intended to help you obtain the data to respond to the Defcare Liability Module's questions.
Naturally you may find it more efficient to operate the Liability Module in conjunction with your investigation as it progresses, rather than to run it as a 'check' at the end of the process. This strategy has the advantage of allowing the Liability Module's questions to 'customise' and potentially streamline the direction of your investigation.
Finally the Liability Module will produce a recommendation as to whether liability should be conceded or not. That recommendation will be produced in conjunction with a summary of all the elements 'considered' by the computer. This Liability Module investigation and result should be saved as a client E-doc in the client’s UIN container in TRIM under Rehab & Comp using the structured titling terms and appropriate free text title rules as outlined in the recent training. For a refresher on this refer to document reference 15631150E in TRIM.
Use of the liability module is mandatory for all SRCA cases. Failure to run the Liability Module for such cases is an error for Quality Assurance purposes.
The Defcare Liability Module result is only a guide, (albeit a very powerful and complete guide) and you are not legally obliged to accept the Defcare result. It is possible to reject the Liability Module result and determine another if you are not satisfied with the Liability Module result. However, as the Liability Module rule base takes all RCG policy into account, this should be an exceedingly rare event!
If and when you are ever faced with such an occurrence (i.e. Defcare gives a result which appears anomalous and not consistent with your understanding of the case), firstly go back and check your entries! If there continues to be a discrepancy, you should first discuss the case – i.e. before committing a determination – with the Military Compensation Policy Section to check:
a)whether you have made an error of policy, or
b)whether the rule base of the Defcare Liability Module needs adjustment
If you still need to proceed with a decision which is at variance with the Liability Module recommendation:
You must write a detailed justification of your preferred outcome, demonstrating that your actual determination is:
a)legal
b)more consistent with the evidence and demonstrated circumstances of the case than that of the Liability Module.
This justification should be recorded BOTH on Defcare as an electronic Note and also printed to the document file.
Links
[1] https://clik.dva.gov.au/user/login?destination=node/20098%23comment-form
[2] https://clik.dva.gov.au/user/login?destination=node/20416%23comment-form
[3] https://clik.dva.gov.au/user/login?destination=node/20156%23comment-form
[4] https://clik.dva.gov.au/user/login?destination=node/20167%23comment-form