No treatment and no assessment begins under this contract without a referral from ACC. Any service a client receives from you starts with an ACC265 – Referral for Psychological Services. It is sent to PractiSpace, checked by us, and then allocated to you.
This form is where ACC says what it is asking for, and it is the only place that says it. It also tells you where this person is in their recovery, and where you join them: whether ACC is asking for treatment, as with Ana, or for an assessment, as with Tomás, Mereana and David. By the end of this unit, you’ll be able to read that from the form.
The ACC265 is not intended to provide everything you need to know clinically about the client. In practice, ACC referrals are often brief, and some sections may contain very little information. It is not a substitute for your own clinical understanding and formulation.
What it does tell you is what ACC is asking Psychological Services to do, and what ACC has authorised for this referral.
That authorisation comes as a Purchase Order (PO): ACC’s approval of the services it will fund for this client, each identified by a service code, with the number of hours approved. Its number sits at the top of the ACC265, and we’ll come back to it below.
We check the referral and the PO before the client reaches you, so you are not responsible for managing it, correcting service codes or following up with ACC about administrative issues.
You do, however, need to understand what you have been referred to do.
The sections below follow the order of the form, using Ana’s referral as the example.
The grey-and-white extracts through this unit are the ACC265 itself — its own section bars, labels and tick boxes — filled in with Ana’s referral. The form’s printed labels are in light type; what has been typed into the form is in bold.
Vendor and Supplier both mean PractiSpace — the organisation holding the ACC contract. You are the clinician providing the service. Nothing in this section needs anything from you.
Name, date of birth, ethnicity and contact details, followed by a few fields about the client’s life and recovery: their main occupation, the injury as they describe it, the rehabilitation outcome they are working towards and when it is expected, and any current treatment, cultural considerations or other health information.
These fields are often brief, and some are left empty. When they are filled in, they tell you something before you meet the client. The rehabilitation outcome is worth noting in particular: your work is part of how the client gets there.
This section also contains the ACC claim number. You will need it when you write your reports, so it is worth noting where to find it.
The client’s GP, their practice, and the practice’s email address and phone number.
Sometimes this section arrives with ACC’s placeholder text still in it, such as [Insert GP name]. If so, ask your client for their GP’s details at your first session.
At the top of the ACC265, just above section 1, you will see the Purchase Order (PO) number.
Section 4 opens with Services approved: the services ACC has authorised under that Purchase Order.
These are not separate processes. The services table is essentially the detail of what ACC has authorised on the PO.
On Ana’s referral, this tells us that ACC has authorised the PSY50 service, for the period shown, with four hours.
Each code stands for a particular kind of work. You do not need to memorise them — they are introduced in the units where they are used — but it is worth knowing that the codes are not simply billing labels. They carry ACC’s intention for this client.
A useful distinction is:
If something you receive does not make sense, contact PractiSpace rather than trying to resolve it directly with ACC.
The services table also includes a From date and a To date.
These dates define the period for which that service has been authorised. They are therefore different from the date of your first appointment and should not be read as the expected duration of therapy. On Ana’s referral the period is a full year, although her four planning hours will be used within a few weeks.
As a provider, you mainly need to be aware that ACC-funded services are provided within an authorised period. PractiSpace keeps track of this period with you, so your sessions are completed within it.
The Qty. approved column tells you how much of that particular service ACC has authorised.
It is important to read this together with the service code. Four hours of one service code do not necessarily mean the same thing as four hours of another.
Tells you what ACC has funded.
Tells you how much of it ACC has funded.
Below the services table come the two fields that explain the referral: Reason psychological services is required, and Specific outcome to be achieved from providing psychological services.
This is where ACC describes why it is referring the client for Psychological Services, and what it expects the service to achieve. The explanation may sit in either field, and sometimes one of them is left empty.
The amount and quality of information varies considerably. Sometimes the referral contains a useful clinical and rehabilitation summary; at other times it contains only a few sentences. The text is sometimes taken from another professional’s report or recommendation, such as a pain or medical assessment, rather than written with you in mind.
What you need to establish is:
The client may have many difficulties that are clinically important. The referral tells us the purpose for which ACC has requested and funded Psychological Services.
If the purpose of the referral is unclear, contact PractiSpace. We can clarify the referral with ACC where necessary.
Date outcome to be achieved and Alternative location required are often empty. When the second is filled in, it tells you ACC expects the service to be delivered somewhere other than your usual rooms.
Additional comments is worth a glance. This is where ACC may note, for example, that it wants the service to start urgently. If you see a request like that and can’t start soon, tell us straight away.
The final section of the ACC265 identifies the ACC staff member responsible for the referral. The form calls this person the Recovery Team Member, but in practice they are known as the Recovery Partner, usually shortened to RP.
The RP is your ACC contact for this client. If something comes up that needs ACC to act — a practical issue stopping the client attending, or a decision that affects whether treatment can continue — they are the person to talk to. Unit 6, Working with Recovery Partners covers this in more detail.
The RP is also in direct contact with PractiSpace, and sends us other things needed before treatment can start. All of that happens before the client reaches you.
The Attachments line shows whether ACC has sent documents with the referral: a previous assessment, or other claim documents, often listed simply as a Doc group. These can tell you a good deal about the client’s injury and recovery so far. If something is ticked and you haven’t received it, ask us.
Once a client has been allocated to you, get in touch with them within three business days. This first contact is just to introduce yourself and either arrange your first appointment or let them know when you expect to be able to start. We’ll give you an email template you can use.
Two things to pass on to us if they come up:
Let us know as early as you can, and we’ll take it from there.
Everything on the ACC265 converges on one question:
The form answers it in two parts.
What has happened to this person, and what ACC understands to be getting in the way.
Which service ACC has approved, for how long, and how much of it.
Read together, they tell you which of the two routes from Unit 1, Working Under the PSB Contract this client is on.
ACC has authorised psychological treatment. This client is in Ana’s situation: they have an injury ACC has accepted, and psychological difficulty has grown up around it that is now getting in the way of their recovery.
Your work is to address that difficulty so their recovery can continue.
ACC has authorised an assessment. The question here is different. The psychological condition may have become an injury in its own right, and before treatment can be planned on that basis, ACC needs to establish what the condition is and how it connects to what happened.
The assessment is what answers that question.
You should be able to finish reading the referral and answer three things:
From the reason and outcome fields.
From the services approved.
The two together.
If those three make sense, you have what you need from the ACC265 and you can begin.
If they do not — if the reason and outcome fields do not explain the referral, or the authorised service does not seem to match what is being asked — contact PractiSpace. That is exactly the kind of thing we sort out with ACC, and it is better sorted before you start.
When you receive an ACC referral, make sure you understand:
You are responsible for understanding the clinical purpose and scope of the work you are undertaking.
PractiSpace:
You should not need to become an ACC administrator in order to provide ACC-funded psychological treatment.
The ACC265 does not need to tell you everything about your client.
It needs to tell you enough to understand what this person has been referred for, and what you have been authorised to provide.
PractiSpace Limited — a contracted supplier to ACC under the Psychological Services (PSB) contract. We manage referrals, purchase orders and ACC correspondence so our providers can focus on clinical work.