No review of ACC rejections - Smith

ACC Minister Nick Smith. Photo / Mark Mitchell

* 1528 - The number of elective surgery cases going to review in the past financial year, up from 912 the year before.
* 65 per cent - ACC's success rate in review hearings, down from 70 per cent.

ACC Minister Nick Smith this morning ruled out holding an independent review of the corporation's procedures around elective surgery claims unless the corporation began to lose large numbers of appeals against its decisions.

Opposition MPs last week added their voices to calls for an independent review of the Accident Compensation Corporation's high rate of rejection for elective surgery claims following the Herald's series late last year highlighting dozens of cases where accident victims were denied such treatment.

Greens health and ACC spokesman Kevin Hague argued that while ACC's board had already initiated an internal review of the decision making process around elective surgery, it had taken a independent review last year of the corporation's treatment of "sensitive claims" by sexual abuse victims before that matter was properly dealt with.

But Dr Smith yesterday said he had a high level of confidence in ACC's procedures around elective surgery claims.

"Every individual case where a person is dissatisfied with ACC the current legislation provides them with the capacity to be able to have that reviewed and if necessary taken to court.

"At the moment ACC is well and truly winning the majority of those cases. That indicates independent reviewers are finding ACC is making fair decisions about the eligibility for elective surgery and equally so when we go on to see decisions that got to the court. So I don't see any justification for an independent review."

Dr Smith said he had been keeping an eye on review decisions "and if I see ACC losing - the reviewers and the courts finding that ACC is unfairly making decisions about ACC's elective surgery entitlements - that would be the sort of trigger that I might consider for some sort of independent review".

Last year Auckland accident lawyer Philip Schmidt wrote twice to ministers and MPs asking for an independent investigation into what he said was a small group of doctors being used by the corporation to reject claims on grounds of pre-injury "degenerative" conditions.

He also called for a review of ACC owned Dispute Resolution Services which handles appeals against ACC's decisions.