Workplace data for scrutiny

By RICHARD BRADDELL

WELLINGTON - The accident insurance regulator is looking into the accuracy and completeness of data used by the Insurance Council to base claims of dramatic drops in workplace deaths and injuries in the private market.

The Insurance Council used the data, in which deaths were down by half and accidents by 40 per cent, to argue in favour of retaining private insurers in workers' compensation.

But a spokesperson in Accident Insurance Minister Michael Cullen's office said the regulator was conducting his own quality assurance review and analysis of the data.

The council has come under attack from Dr Cullen, who accused it of applying only five months of data, from July to November 1999, to get annualised figures for its argument that the private market was easily outperforming ACC.

Dr Cullen said the data ignored the second half of the financial year, January to June, when deaths were typically higher. Half of the previous years' fatalities occurred between January and March, he said.

However, Dr Cullen offered no explanation as to how the Insurance Council had arrived at a 40 per cent fall in the actual accident rate in the private market, apart from suggesting that the private insurers were reaping the benefit of accident prevention work previously undertaken by ACC.

But an insurance expert said previous restructurings of ACC had initially resulted in lower claims rates, perhaps as people adjusted to or learned how to work the system.

In a rejoinder to Dr Cullen's accusation that its data was drawn on only five months' figures, the Insurance Council echoed numerous submissions to the select committee, saying that the market needed to run for at least a year before truly meaningful comparisons could be made.

The council is understood to have reached its conclusions after actuarial advice on a mass of raw data provided by the regulator on compact disk.

Meanwhile, workplace fatality data reported to Occupational Safety and Health confirm Dr Cullen's assertion that deaths tend to be higher between January and March, although the trend is not consistent.

And Osh data on serious injury rates suggests only a modest decline in the period of the private market over the same six months of the previous year; nothing like the 40 per cent drop in accident claims observed by the Insurance Council.

However, a caveat has to be attached to the Osh data on serious accidents since there is no way of knowing the extent of under-reporting.