Up to 300,000 people a year could be missing out on ACC cover, treatment or support a new report has estimated.
That’s more than four times ACC’s own estimates and it’s prompted the report’s authors to call for an independent commissioner to oversee the system, make it more transparent and keep better data.
They also want to see a change in the way ACC determines how an injury was caused.
In a report funded by the Law Foundation, lead author Warren Forster said while ACC estimated it made 70,000 decisions declining cover or entitlements, it did not keep any specific data about it.
Using previously published information, the researchers said the number of people missing out was actually far higher, with from 200,000 to 300,000 people not getting cover, treatment and other entitlements.
Mr Forster said part of the problem was how ACC accepted or declined claims based on how it determined what caused an injury.
While some claims were as simple as filling out a form at a doctor’s surgery or physio, others were more complex and if they were declined it could be a lengthy process to challenge the decision.
“The bar of causation has become quite a difficult one for an injured person to overcome and what we’re saying is it’s moved too far away from what people understand causation to be.
“It’s too hard for them, as individuals, to get what they need to fight that.”
Denise Powell from the ACC support group, Acclaim Otago, said the process of challenging a decision could take up a lot of time and cause a lot of stress.
“What happens is we end up wasting an awful amount of time and money and resources on arguing about what the cause was rather than looking at rehabilitation and treatment,” she said.
A lawyer specialising in ACC disputes, Ben Thompson,
said ACC held the upper hand when the cause of an injury was disputed.
“They’ve got tremendous resources, not the least of which is their own medical specialists in-house.
“They can get medical reports on tap, that’s not an issue for them, trying to contest that as an individual …
for a lot of people that’s really insurmountable.”
Mr Thompson said because of that, many people were put off going down that path and instead relied on the public health system, or private health insurance.
Warren Forster said there needed to be an independent Personal Injury Commissioner, backed up by advocates, to help people use and understand the ACC system.
ACC said its decisions were based on expert medical advice and it denied applying the law about the cause of injuries too narrowly.
