Nearly 8000 long-term ACC clients have had payments stopped in the year to June as the agency deems them work-ready. Photo / RNZ, Angus Dreaver
By Nine To Noon of RNZ
A record number of long-term ACC clients have had their payments stopped, because ACC has decided they are work-ready or no longer injured.
However, many said they can’t work and believed they were being dumped as a way for ACC to save money.
In the year to June nearly 8000 clients were removed from the long-term claims pool – a 20% lift on the previous year.
ACC said these people were ready to work, or were no longer injured, with chief executive Megan Main describing it as an “important achievement” in the annual report.
However, ACC advocate Warren Forster told RNZ’s Nine to Noon many clients – most of whom have chronic and enduring injuries – were not work-ready, and those seeking reviews of their cases are having to wait months.
“If ACC had somehow tripled the effectiveness of their rehabilitation in the last 10 years I’d be the first person celebrating.
“If we had evidence of real rehabilitation, of actually people being supported to get back to work, then I’d be taking my hat off to ACC, saying ‘incredible’. We don’t have any evidence of that.”
ACC Minister Scott Simpson had previously asked ACC, via his Letter of Expectations, to focus on long-term claimants and said the numbers were a “huge result”.
“Often ACC staff deal with clients who have long-standing and challenging personal situations, and I rely on ACC staff to use their judgment given each client’s individual circumstances.”
One of those people recently deemed work-ready was Jonathan Simcock.
He received a letter from ACC last Monday advising him he was work-ready and his payments would cease in 28 days.
This is despite the most recent medical advice provided to ACC advising he was not work-ready, and strongly advised against discharging him from his long-term claim.
He lived with chronic pain, anxiety and depression after a bike accident left him contending with a brachial plexus injury that has mostly paralysed his dominant arm.
Simcock said the correspondence from ACC was “totally out of the blue”.
“It was based on some of the internal guidance and I’d been working on a back-to-work programme, working with ACC to try and get work capability for me and capacity to see wherever that would end up.
“We were working towards this and then literally, from another internal guidance, totally went against any of the other information I was working on and believed that we were working together to get back into some sort of work and to see where that would progress to.”
His last medical assessment suggested he could work three hours a day, up to 10 hours a week.
“Then on the 20th of this month [October] ACC wrote another internal guidance without having any more medical advice or any more investigation, and then from that, they said you’ve been identified to be able to work in two roles over a 30-hour week full time.”
Simcock said it would be “impossible” to work 30 hours a week with his condition.
He said the pain he suffered impacted his sleep and quality of life.
“I would become more anxious, more stressed, lose sleep, wouldn’t be able to do anything around home, I’d only be able to do some work, and then I’d have to have days off being sick.
“It would be horrendous.”
He said it felt like ACC would find any means necessary to get long-term claimants off the books.
“It just feels like they’re stacking it up, and they’re just putting their people in to get the answer they want, and the answer they want is they want all long-term people off ACC because we don’t fit into the nice model.
“I have a serious injury that affects my disability, that affects my life every single day. It’s an incredibly complex and difficult situation. ACC is meant to help me, and basically they’re just throwing us, all of us, onto the trash heap.”
After inquiries from Nine to Noon, ACC agreed to reassess Simcock’s case, and reinstated his payments in the meantime.
Forster said the “exit strategies” used by ACC were systemic, and it was about more than one person.
“You’ve just heard an example of an individual case where that assessment was the person couldn’t go back to work, but ACC still cut them off, and that’s happening across the board at scale.”
ACC client recovery acting head Matthew Goodger confirmed they were reassessing Simcock’s case.
“I’m sorry to hear about Jonathan’s situation and the distress this is causing him.
“We are taking another look at his case. While we do, he will continue to receive weekly compensation.
“His case manager has been in touch with him to let him know. We will continue to work with his GP and his other providers and fund any rehabilitation or treatment he needs for his covered injuries.”
Goodger said ACC’s role was to support people to recover from their injuries so they could return to work and independence.
“In mid-2024 we changed the way we managed some long-term claims to ensure these clients were getting the dedicated, interdisciplinary support they needed to get back to independence, including the establishment of new teams of one-to-one case managers.
“This focus is reflected in an increased number of long-term claims being closed as clients were successfully supported to recover from their injuries so they could return to their pre-injury role or other work types, or in some cases identifying that covered injuries had resolved.”
- RNZ