Australia Work Visa Health Requirements: What Applicants Must Meet

If you are applying for an Australian work visa, you must meet the health requirement. This means a Medical Officer of the Commonwealth (MOC) will assess whether your condition is likely to result in significant costs to the Australian community or prejudice access to health care and community services in short supply. The current Significant Cost Threshold (SCT) is $86,000, and it was last updated on 1 July 2024. If your estimated costs are assessed as above this threshold, you will not meet the health requirement and your visa will not be granted unless a health waiver is available for your visa subclass and is exercised in your favour.

What the health requirement tests

The health requirement is not a single test but an assessment of two distinct risks. The first is whether your condition is likely to generate costs that are significant to the Australian community. The second is whether your condition is likely to prejudice access to health care or community services that are in short supply.

The MOC makes this assessment. For the cost test, the MOC compares the estimated cost of your condition against the Significant Cost Threshold. The SCT is the policy mechanism used to contain public expenditure on health care and community services, as outlined in the Migration Regulations 1994. Its current value is $86,000, and it is reviewed biennially.

For the prejudice test, the Department takes advice from the Australian Department of Health, Disability and Ageing on services considered to be in short supply. Currently, these are organ transplants and dialysis. If your condition is likely to require one of these services, you may fail the health requirement on this ground even if your estimated costs are below the SCT.

How the Significant Cost Threshold is calculated

The SCT is set by reference to the average spending for health and welfare services an Australian would require over a five-year period. The Department uses two published Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) reports — one on health spending and one on welfare spending — and applies a projection to bring the historical data into the current year. This projected figure becomes the SCT value.

The SCT includes the following cost items:

Category	Included items
Health spending on goods and services	Hospital care; primary health care delivered in the community including by a General Practitioner; unreferred and referred medical services including specialists and pathology; research and public health programs; pharmaceuticals under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme
Welfare spending on payments and services	Aged care including residential care, home care and community services; disability services funded by the NDIS, employment support, youth support, social services and protection support; specialised education support for children with disability; cash welfare payments such as Carers Payments, Disability Support Pension and Child Disability Assistance Payment

Having a condition does not automatically mean you will exceed the SCT. The estimated cost depends on the kind of condition, its severity, and your intended period of stay in Australia.

How costs are assessed for temporary versus permanent visas

The assessment period differs depending on whether you are applying for a temporary visa or a provisional or permanent visa.

For temporary visa applicants, your estimated health and community costs are assessed for your period of stay in Australia. This means the assessment is tied to the duration of the visa you are seeking.

For provisional or permanent visa applicants, the assessment is generally for a period of five years — or three years if you are aged 75 years or older. However, if you have a permanent or ongoing condition with a reasonably predictable course, the MOC will assess your health costs over your remaining life expectancy, up to a maximum of ten years.

In all cases, the SCT value of $86,000 is applied against the estimated costs. If your estimated costs are assessed as above the SCT, you will exceed the threshold and therefore not meet the health requirement.

What happens if you do not meet the health requirement

If you do not meet the health requirement because your condition is likely to be a significant cost, the visa will not be granted. The same applies if you do not meet the requirement because your condition is likely to prejudice access to health care or community services in short supply.

There are two exceptions. The first is if you are an eligible child born and ordinarily resident in Australia. The second is if a health waiver is available for the visa subclass you have applied for and a decision has been made to exercise the waiver.

A health waiver allows the decision maker to consider your personal circumstances to mitigate any costs so that the costs can be waived. The Department can consider exercising a health waiver for some visas where it is satisfied that granting the visa would be unlikely to result in significant cost to the Australian community, or unlikely to prejudice the access of Australian citizens or permanent residents to health care or community services in short supply.

If a health waiver is available for your visa subclass, the visa processing officer must consider it. They will contact you if they require further information. Note that the availability of a health waiver depends on the visa subclass — not all visas have one.

What this means for work visa applicants

If you are applying for a work visa, the health requirement applies to you as it does to any other visa applicant. The specific assessment will depend on whether your visa is temporary or permanent. For example, a Skills in Demand (subclass 482) visa is a temporary visa, so your costs would be assessed for your period of stay. A Skilled Independent (subclass 189) visa is permanent, so the five-year or life-expectancy assessment would apply.

The key point is that the health requirement is not a fixed checklist. It is an individual assessment based on your condition, its severity, and the length of your intended stay. You should not assume that having a medical condition automatically disqualifies you, nor should you assume that you will pass. The MOC’s assessment is the determining factor.

What to do next

If you are preparing a work visa application, you should review the health requirement guidance on the Department of Home Affairs website to understand how the assessment applies to your visa subclass. You should also check whether a health waiver is available for the visa you are applying for, as this may affect your options if you do not meet the requirement.

You should also be aware that the SCT is reviewed biennially. The current value of $86,000 was last updated on 1 July 2024, so you should verify the current value before lodging your application. The official page on protecting health care and community services is the authoritative source for this information.