New Zealand’s Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) announced that it has reached agreement with four companies to manage a small number of its long term claims.
About 600 long term claims (out of a pool of almost 12,000) will be allocated to these companies to manage. These are clients who have been with ACC for more than one year (excluding those that are classified as seriously injured).
The four companies involved are Southern Cross Healthcare (trading as Care Advantage), Wellnz Ltd, Total Rehabilitation Services (an Aon company), and Gallagher Bassett Services. They will each receive 150 claims to manage.
“These agreements will give us access to more resource to manage claims and will also let us benchmark ACC’s performance against other organizations and see if more effective rehabilitation outcomes can be achieved”, said Denise Cosgrove, General Manager, Claims Management.
According to Cosgrove, “Like ACC, these firms have the goal of returning clients to their pre-injury lives as far as practicable, as soon as possible. The fact is, the longer people stay on ACC the harder it gets for them to get back to their normal lives, including work.”
The four firms already have experience managing ACC claims, on behalf of organizations in the ACC ‘Partnership Programme’. The Partnership Programme allows large organizations to fund and manage their own ACC claims, and already covers about 15% of the New Zealand workforce. ACC’s own subsidiary, Catalyst Risk Management, will also continue to manage a number of claims alongside these four firms.
“The individuals will remain ACC clients with the same entitlements as everyone else but the administration of their claims will be handled by the private firm,” Cosgrove noted. “They will also have the same review rights as every other ACC client. (workersxzcompxzkit)
“ACC has been concerned about the growth in long term claims for some time and has put in place a number of internal initiatives to address this, such as the Recover Independence Service that was introduced last year. This Service is already delivering positive signs of improvement. We have been considering partnering with external claims managers for more than a year now, as it is one way to help more people, as quickly as possible.”
Author Robert Elliott, executive vice president, Amaxx Risks Solutions, Inc. has worked successfully for 20 years with many industries to reduce Workers’ Compensation costs, including airlines, healthcare, manufacturing, printing/publishing, pharmaceuticals, retail, hospitality and manufacturing. He can be contacted at: [email protected] or 860-553-6604.
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