Doctors charged with abusing A.C.C. system

Press, 9 January 1987, Page 3

Doctors charged with abusing A.C.C. system

PA Wellington The greatest abusers of New Zealand’s accident compensation system are doctors, says an American Fulbright scholar, Mr Robert Selsor.

“The largest source of abuse appears to lie not with accident victims, but with doctors,” he said, in a report on forms of compensation and insurance.

Doctors were often tempted to bill the Accident Compensation Corporation for non-accident-related conditions, and occasionally they padded a patient’s disability assessment so they got compensated more than they should, Mr Selsor said. The report, written by six members of the American legal profession, examined the American system of claiming through the courts for injuries. Mr Selsor, who studied New Zealand’s system while attending Victoria University under a Fulbright scholarship, looked at A.C.C. as an alternative. He described New Zealand’s compensation system as unique, and the most comprehensive in

the world. It was the “ultimate no-fault system,” and a “social insurance plan that makes no judgments”.

Mr Selsor said the Woodhouse report’s claim that the previous common law system was an expensive way of resolving disputes over injury had some truth.

The average overhead cost for four common law claims looked at was 48.5 c of every dollar paid out. New Zealand’s system had an average administration cost of 10.28 c of every dollar spent by the A.C.C. (between 1981 and 1985).

The main reason for the difference was that the system did not require fault finding, Mr Selsor said.

However, there were two areas not covered within New Zealand’s legal framework as well as they should be. Medical malpractice or misadventure could not be civilly prosecuted in the courts unless the offending doctor’s conduct fell to a level that would warrant exemplary damages, he said. “In addition to medical malpractice there is a

good argument that the New Zealand system does not adequately deal with the problem of defective products.” This could lead to the country being used as a testing ground for anyone who got over the regulatory hurdles, Mr Selsor said.