Medical Assessment
 

Hi Everyone

After months of stalking this is my first post so please go easy on me ha ha!!

My husband has been offered and accepted a job in New Zealand and we have submitted our visa application. All seems to be going ok after a few hiccups with qualifications and work experience, our sons medical has come back as being under assessment (which we were expecting after the panel doctor told us this would happen). He is 6 and has speech and language delay although has no specific treatment (bar a few pointless speech & language sessions once a year but that's another story) and receives no additional funding etc in school, we have submitted all reports (all dated within the last 6 months) from speech & language therapists, peads, educational psychologist and school etc to confirm this.

I just wondered if anyone has any experience similar to this and how long this process can take, the medical assessor has had this information for 2 weeks now due to the hospital where we had our medicals done not sending them in the first place.

Absolutely any advice would be greatly welcomed, I don't think I can remember life before New Zeland and visas consumed my every waking thought.

Re: Medical Assessment
 

The usual feedback is that any hiccup with medicals, where extra reports are required, results in a months delay on visa processing. I think there's been more extra reports asked for since e-medicals went live and that initially caused longer delays but that may have been cleared up now. Immigration NZ have some information on their website but it's down for maintenance today, theoretically back tomorrow.

Re: Medical Assessment
 

Thank you for replying to my post, I guess we have been slightly naïve as to how long this process would take, lots more sleepless nights to come then.

Thanks again for posting

Re: Medical Assessment
 

As has been written, this assessment may be some while int he pipeline. Several years ago there were as few as 4 medical assessors to clear all medical referrals & you have to remember these will come in from all over the world. I have no idea how many MA there currently are but there will probably be a pile for each of them.

Try not to bite all your fingernails to the quick and look out for that well known affliction Immigration Finger Syndrome.

Re: Medical Assessment
 

Medical referrals can take quite a while.
First off, when there is any discrepancy from the norm in any medical report for any applicant the medical must be referred to the assessors as Immigration cannot refuse a visa application on the grounds of a person not being at a sufficient level of health unless they have beed advised by a medical assessor that refusal on these grounds is an option.

The medical assessors used by Immigration aren't specialists in different areas of medicine, they are GP's who have been approved to give advice on a persons medical report so if an issue is brought to their attention they must research it to death to ensure the advice they give is correct as it is unlikely they'll have the expertise in each case to make a determination, however they don't always get it right.
They didn't in our case and that delayed us 13 months and many dollars. We could have applied for a medical waiver which we would have got but decided to fight the medical assessor decision instead to prove they were incompetent. We felt it was a massive miscarriage of justice at the time and didnt want others to be affected the way we were so wanted Immigration to shake up how they dealt with these issues. Hopefully our case made an impression and led to a change in their process but we'll never know. It took a while but we did prove the advice of the MA to be utter drivel and Immigration had no option but to approve our Visas.

Hopefully it won't take that long for you but remember that you can always apply for a medical waiver should the need arise. This is where immigration determine whether the benefits of having your family in NZ and working/contributing outweighs you being refused on the grounds of not having an acceptable level of health and assumed high medical costs.

Re: Medical Assessment
 

Thank you both for taking the time to reply to my post, you have all been very helpful. I think I had searched as much as I could to find as much out as possible regarding medicals but sometimes advice from people who have actually gone through it is invaluable (and I dare say I may pop up on here many more times now I have finally posted for the first time).

As it happens we have just had an email from our migration person to say that my son's medical has been assessed as an acceptable standard of health and was updated on the portal yesterday. I am so happy but know we still have a way to go as its being passed to the next stage for the quality checks so am still not getting my hopes up - unfortunately immigration finger syndrome is still rife in this house.

Thank you all once again for taking the time to reply to me :)

Re: Medical Assessment
 

expect that to take about two weeks, so don't panic

Re: Medical Assessment
 

Thanks again all, you have been very helpful and I really appreciate it