2016-Jul 01: Update on medical referrals and actions underway

Visa Pak 266 - Update on medical referral timeframes for the week ending 24 June 2016.

Visa Paks

01 July 2016

Update on medical referrals and actions underway

Below is an update on current waiting times for medical assessments received for the week ending 24 June 2016.

The update

•There were 4,117 health cases submitted through eMedical last week.
•The auto-clear rate for this week was 68.6%, against a target of 70.0%. This means 2,825 people had a health outcome within minutes.
•The Health Assessment Team (HAT) cleared an additional 581 medicals within 3 days.
•The wait time for priority visa types (Student, Work [with job offer] and Skilled Migrant Category) is on target of <10 days.
•The wait time for other types is not on target of <30 days.

Immigration New Zealand has recently experienced issues with the Citrix portal that is used for external Medical Assessors. This has led to a decrease in capacity for medical assessments over the last two weeks. This unfortunately is now leading to a delay for approximately 7% of the applicants needing a medical assessment. These medicals may take up to 40 calendar days to be allocated to a Medical Assessor as opposed to the 30 calendar days we aim for.

The Immigration Health Team (IHT) would encourage you to make the HAT aware of any time critical cases using the usual process so they can be handled with urgency. IHT have recruited an additional four Medical Assessors over the last month, three of whom have started this week, with one more starting in the coming week.  IHT expect all visa types to be within flow by the end of July.

The wait times for the queues do not include times with the Medical Assessor. The wait times are specified as calendar days, rather than working days.

HAT will not refer a health case to a Medical Assessor until the visa application is confirmed. If you see a warning in AMS or a note in IHS saying contact HAT, please do so as soon as possible to avoid delays in your client’s application.
 
Action

For your information.