ACC Case Management Needs More Work

Kia ora

PNZ Chief Executive Officer Sandra Kirby is in the news again today, raising concerns with ACC’s Next Generation Case Management.

Following an ACC internal review of the system, Radio New Zealand has highlighted that the $74m restructure lacks clear benefits.

“Sandra Kirby, who has been vocal about how the changes have caused problems for physios and patients, said the system worked well if it was a simple claim, but it was not set up to deal with the more complex cases, especially those managed by ACC's 'Assisted Recovery' programme, where claims were managed by teams of people rather than one case manager.

"It takes multiple calls, and because it's a call center, multiple calls is multiple contacts with different people re-explaining the case, and the decisions that are made can be quite inconsistent.

"So we still remain concerned that some people are denied the services that they need to be able to recover from injury."

PNZ believes the Assisted Recovery process is not set up to deal with the complexities that come from people’s injuries. Physiotherapists and their clients are looking for a system to provide clinical and rehabilitation services in a timely and effective manner; to date the Next Generation system does not always deliver.

Our members report inconsistency in decision making and an inability for the system to deal with more than one issue at a time resulting in unnecessary delays for all parties involved. The system could work better if ACC trusted the clinical decisions made by practitioners who are working with the clients and their injuries.

The ACC Next Generation Case Management Post Implementation Review is available on acc.co.nz.

Ngā mihi


Page updated May 2022