ACC changed spinal clients' case managers without permission, trust says

ACC is moving some clients with serious spinal injuries from personal case managers to teams of managers without their permission, The New Zealand Spinal Injury Trust says.

File image. Photo: 123 RF

As part of a shake-up in the way ACC deals with all clients, the organisation's transition to a "Next Generation Case Management" means those with complex needs will retain an ACC recovery partner [personal case manager] but those with more routine needs are taken care of by a team of what ACC calls "recovery assistants".

New Zealand Spinal Trust national programme manager Andrew Hall said concerns were raised about the new model when it was first announced about 18 months ago because it feared recovery assistants would not have the expertise that personal case managers had to deal with serious spinal injuries.

"The assisted recovery team is basically a call centre and our concern was that the special expertise would not be necessarily available," Hall said.

"ACC agreed that anybody who was going to be transitioned to what they call the assisted recovery team, it would only occur if they had agreed to that."

The trust and ACC even produced a brochure to distribute to spinal clients about the new model which explicitly stated that moving to a recovery assistant team would only occur with their agreement.

In reality, that wasn't happening, Hall said.

"For a number of people they weren't given any choice, they were just told, 'you are now with the assisted recovery team'."

Hall, who himself has a spinal injury and is in a wheelchair, said he personally was given a choice by ACC for his case to be managed by a team - which he was happy to do - but others were not.

"Our experience has been that these types of models are implemented, supposedly, to improve how quickly people answer the phone or [deal with] the routine nature of what's required, but rarely does that happen. It seems to be a cost saving exercise to save on staff."

RNZ revealed yesterday that some sensitive claims clients were now being being managed by a team rather than individual case managers.

New Zealand Association of Psychotherapists' ACC liaison Victoria Smith said some of her clients were also being told they had to move from a personal case manager to a team of managers, even if if they didn't want to.

ACC also promised the Spinal Trust that clients that had been moved to a recovery assistant team could be moved back to a recovery partner if the need arose - but this was proving difficult for some to do, Hall said.

The inconsistent approach was troubling, he said.

"Some have been able to switch back... for others, they are reporting that they can't switch back and they're trying to handle whatever it is they're after through the call centre, and they don't have the expertise to properly support them."

ACC said it was not aware of any cases where a spinal client had been moved to a team against their wishes.

"This is not the way the new model was designed. Clients only transition between teams when there has been a discussion with the client and/or their provider, and everyone agrees it is in the client's best interests for us to support them in different way," an ACC spokesperson said.

"We are not aware of any cases where a spinal client has been moved to the Assisted Recovery team against their expressed wishes. If the NZ Spinal Trust knows of any specific cases where they believe that has happened, we would hope they would raise it with us directly."

"If a client has been transferred to Assisted Recovery and believe that they require one to one support, they can request a transfer back to Partnered Recovery."

NZ Spinal Trust chief executive Hans Wouters said he was confident the Trust could work collaboratively with ACC to find a solution.

"Representative organisations such as ours enjoy an open dialogue and in some cases strong relationship with ACC and have done so for many years. From time to time we are called upon to work on solving problems together collaboratively and have enjoyed successes that improve the outcomes for serious injury clients."