Whole person impairment in Queensland: how DPI and ISV assessments work

Three different figures get called “the impairment number” in a Queensland injury claim. A degree of permanent impairment, or DPI, is what a workers’ compensation insurer states in a notice of assessment. An injury scale value, or ISV, is what a court assigns when it awards general damages. Whole person impairment is the estimate the civil liability rules use as evidence when a court sets that value, and it is defined more narrowly than its name suggests. The DPI and the whole person impairment estimate are percentages; the injury scale value is not.

Two changes matter before you read anything older on the topic. The rules for assessing an injury scale value outside the workers’ compensation scheme now sit in the Civil Liability Regulation 2025 (Qld), which commenced on 1 September 2025. And since a 2024 amendment, a workers’ compensation impairment assessment must be made as required by scheme directions, which the Workers’ Compensation Regulator makes with the Minister’s approval under s 329A of the Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Act 2003 (Qld).

Three numbers, three separate jobs

Confusing the first and the third is the common error. Neither is a conversion of the other.

What “permanent” means, and why the schemes differ

In the workers’ compensation scheme an impairment is a loss of, or loss of efficient use of, any part of a worker’s body (s 37), and it is permanent when it is “stable and stationary and not likely to improve with further medical or surgical treatment” (s 38). That is a present-state test, and an impairment still likely to improve with further medical or surgical treatment has not met it. The Civil Liability Regulation 2025 (Qld) uses a forward-looking one: in its dictionary, permanent impairment is the impairment a person has “or is likely to have” even after maximum medical improvement, so it does not require that maximum medical improvement has already been reached.

DPI: the percentage the workers’ compensation scheme runs on

Either side can start the process. After lodging an application for compensation, a worker may ask the insurer to have the injury assessed for a degree of permanent impairment (ss 178, 179). The assessor depends on the injury: an audiologist for industrial deafness, a medical assessment tribunal for a psychiatric or psychological injury, a doctor for anything else (s 179(2)). The result is a percentage.

It then operates arithmetically. The Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Regulation 2025 (Qld) s 117 multiplies the maximum statutory compensation by the DPI, and the lump sum must exclude impairment attributable to a condition existing before the injury, or one for which the worker is not entitled to compensation (s 180). At 30% or more there is an additional lump sum, capped at 216.15 times Queensland full-time adult ordinary time earnings, but not where the percentage comes from a psychiatric or psychological injury, or from combining one with another injury (s 192). The notice of assessment is due within 10 business days after the insurer receives the assessment, and where several injuries came from one event, only once all the percentages are decided (s 185). Any lump sum offer sits inside that notice (s 187).

The 20% line matters most. Below 20%, a worker cannot have both the lump sum for that injury and damages for it, and the insurer must advise that an irrevocable election is required (ss 189, 239). At 20% or more that provision does not apply. Our notes on the 20% election and the notice of assessment cover both.

ISV: what a court assigns, and the two sets of rules

An injury scale value is not a percentage of anything. It is a whole number from 0 to 100 on a scale that “reflects 100 equal gradations of general damages”, from an injury not severe enough to justify any award to one of the gravest conceivable kind (Civil Liability Act 2003 (Qld) s 61(1)). It prices general damages only, meaning pain and suffering, loss of amenities of life, loss of expectation of life and disfigurement (s 51). Lost income, care and treatment costs are assessed separately and are untouched by it.

There are two sets of injury scale value rules. The Civil Liability Act 2003 (Qld) does not apply to an injury for which workers’ compensation is payable (s 5(1)(b)), so a work injury damages claim is generally assessed under s 306O of the workers’ compensation Act on schedules 13 to 16 of its own 2025 regulation (regulation s 188), while a motor accident, public liability or medical negligence claim runs under s 61 on schedules 2 to 5 of the Civil Liability Regulation 2025 (Qld) (regulation s 5). Two categories of work injury are carved back out of that exclusion: injury during an ordinary recess away from the workplace (s 34(1)(c)), and the journey categories in s 35. For those, workers’ compensation being payable does not by itself push the claim out of the civil liability regime, so any damages claim otherwise available is assessed on the civil liability schedules. The carve-out goes to which rules apply, not to whether there is a claim.

Schedule 3 gives a range for each listed injury, and one body region can span several items. A moderate cervical spine injury involving fracture, disc prolapse or nerve root damage is item 87, at 5 to 15. A moderate cervical soft tissue injury is item 88, at 5 to 10. A minor cervical spine injury is item 89, at 0 to 4, and covers a whiplash injury with no objective signs of neurological impairment whose remaining symptoms are merely a nuisance more than 18 months on. Whatever the reasoning, the value must be a whole number (schedule 2 s 14). The sections that follow work through these civil liability rules; the workers’ compensation regulation has its own equivalents in schedules 13 to 16, not assumed identical here. What it is worth in money is set separately: general damages are a base amount plus a variable amount fixed by a Ministerial notice made before each financial year, indexed to average weekly earnings, for the period within which the injury arose (ss 62, 75).

Where whole person impairment fits, and where it stops

Start with the definition the civil liability rules use. Whole person impairment is an estimate, expressed as a percentage, of the impact of a permanent impairment on the injured person’s “overall ability to perform activities of daily living other than employment”. Employment is carved out, so it is not a measure of capacity to work, and loss of earning capacity is a separate head of damages with its own evidence.

Two rules set its weight. A court must give greater weight to a percentage based on the AMA 5 criteria than to one that is not, except for scarring and mental disorders (schedule 2 s 12). And the regulation says the extent of whole person impairment “is an important consideration, but not the only consideration, affecting the assessment of an ISV” (schedule 2 s 10). A third explains why a medical report will not answer the question most readers want answered: a report stating such a percentage must set out the clinical findings and how it was calculated, but it “must not identify” the schedule item the injury belongs to, or a value for it (schedule 2 s 11). Assigning the value is the court’s function.

Multiple injuries, the dominant injury and the uplift

Under the civil liability rules, where there is more than one injury the court does not add the ranges together. It identifies the dominant injury, being the one with the highest range or, where two or more share it, the one the court selects, and may place the value higher within that range than it would for the dominant injury alone (schedule 2 s 3). If the top of the range is still inadequate it may go above, but never above 100, and it “should rarely be more than 25% higher than the maximum dominant ISV”; beyond that, detailed written reasons are required (schedule 2 s 4). Two rules pull back the other way: an adverse psychological reaction to a physical injury is treated merely as a feature of that injury, and an aggravation counts only to the extent the pre-existing condition was made worse (schedule 2 ss 5, 7).

Psychiatric injury: a separate scale feeding the same schedule

Again under the civil liability rules, a mental disorder is measured by its own instrument but valued on the same schedule as everything else. The instrument is the psychiatric impairment rating scale, the PIRS, in schedule 5 of the Civil Liability Regulation 2025 (Qld), which rates six areas of function: self-care and personal hygiene, social and recreational activities, travel, social functioning, concentration, persistence and pace, and adaptation. Each has five classes, from little or no impairment to total impairment (schedule 4 s 2). A medical expert reads off a class per area, lists them in ascending order, works out the median class score (schedule 4 s 6) and the total, then converts the pair into a percentage using the conversion table (schedule 4 s 7). A rating requires an examination, and a refusal of treatment must not change it, though it must be recorded and the court may take it into account (schedule 4 ss 3(2), 9, 12).

That percentage is then evidence, not the answer. Mental disorders have their own part of schedule 3, items 10 to 13, running from minor (0 to 1) through moderate (2 to 10) and serious (11 to 40) to extreme (41 to 65), and the PIRS rating is what maps a disorder to an item. The court still assigns the value, and the schedule’s own comment on the extreme item makes the point sharply: despite a very high PIRS rating, a value at or near the bottom of the range may be appropriate where the injured person has reduced insight. The workers’ compensation parallel is s 179(5), which requires a psychiatric or psychological injury to be assessed separately from the other injuries in one event.

If the percentage looks wrong

On the workers’ compensation side the window is short and the route is prescribed. Where the DPI was not decided by a medical assessment tribunal, a worker who disagrees has 20 business days from the notice of assessment to tell the insurer and ask either for a fresh assessment by a different entity agreed between them, or for referral to a tribunal (s 186). If a fresh assessment is agreed, the original notice is treated as never having been given; once it is done no further request of that kind can be made, and once the question reaches a tribunal only a tribunal can decide it. Separately, where an impairment worsens later, either side may seek a further assessment of whether the percentage has increased (s 193C).

Published 30 September 2026.

Reading your own paperwork

Three questions locate any notice of assessment or medical report on the map above. Which scheme produced it? Is the figure in it a DPI, an impairment estimate for a court, or an injury scale value? And does it carry a date that starts a clock? The instruments are public: the assessment provision is s 179 of the Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Act 2003 (Qld), the injury scale provision is s 61 of the Civil Liability Act 2003 (Qld), and the current rules and ranges are in the Civil Liability Regulation 2025. Both regulations are remade periodically, so which version applies is a question in its own right, answered by the commencement and any transitional provisions rather than by assumption.

Related reading

• Should you accept your WorkCover lump sum offer?
• WorkCover vs common law in Queensland: the 20% impairment decision
• How Fraser Lawyers helps with WorkCover claims
• Contact Fraser Lawyers

This article is general information only and is not legal advice. Queensland law and the figures referred to can change, and every situation turns on its own facts. Contact Fraser Lawyers for advice specific to your circumstances.

If you would like to discuss your matter, you can book a consultation or call (07) 5554 6116.