Accident compo burden increases

Press, 16 August 1984, Page 6

Accident compo burden increases

PA Wellington The costs of medical treatment have become an increasing financial burden on the Accident Compensation Corporation over the last five years, according to its managing director, Mr Len Fahy. Between 1979 and 1983 overall costs rose 172 per cent, general practitioners’ fees rose by 187 per cent and physiotherapy fees rose by 174 per cent, he said. In effect, costs had almost trebled.

For the year ended March 31, 1983, the corporation paid out $40.4 million for medical treatment To that could be added another $14.5 million for hospital and dental treatment and conveyance for medical attention, he said.

“The simple fact is that the corporation is having to carry an increasing financial burden in respect of medical treatment,” he said in Adelaide, in an address to the 1984 conference on workers’ compensation.

Part of the increase could be put down to.the attitude that accident victims were

entitled to the best possible treatment available, regardless of the expense. Decisions on the quantity and type of medical care were to a very large extent made by the producers or providers, rather than by the consumers, he said.

“This can be seen in the case of hospitalisation, laboratory tests, and treatment using advanced technology. All of these are areas in which rising expenditure has been noted.”

Mr Fahy said that workers’ compensation could not exist in a vacuum.

“The accident compensation system exists in the community for the benefit of the community and at a cost to the community. Ultimately it is the community which will decide the amount of resources to be committed to accident compensation and it is to the community that the Accident Compensation Corporation is ultimately responsible.”

Mr Fahy also discussed safety in the workplace. Job safety suffered because many senior managers were not interested in

the numerous principles and theories developed on risk management and systems safely, he said.

The corporation had no powers of enforcement and relied on educating, creating awareness, and researching better methods of accident prevention.

The job of communicating the safety message to the industrial sector was not made easy by the scale of New Zealand industry, Mr Fahy said. About 95 per cent of factories had 50 employees or fewer, and 74 per cent employed 10 or fewer.

A large financial grant had been made to the Federation of Labour to increase trade union involvement in health and safety matters throughout New Zealand.

Though the corporation had adopted a safety incentive bonus scheme to award and encourage employers whose safety performance was significantly better than expected, it had not yet moved into the area of pencilties, he said.