Megan Main: ACC Chief Executive says removing people from long-term claims pool will encourage returns to workforce

ACC is removing more people from its long-term claims pool.

It's being reported nearly eight thousand clients have had their payments stopped in the year to June – a 20 percent lift on the previous year.

ACC says these people were ready to work, or were no longer injured - despite many claiming otherwise.

Chief Executive Megan Main told Mike Hosking that they want to get people back into the workforce.

She says if people can't get back to work, they at least want to help them become more independent so they can return to living their life.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Building ANNGST around ACC. They've gone and taken a number
of long term recipients off ACC. Nearly eight thousand of
them have been cut off. This is in the year
to June, which is up twenty percent on the previous year.
So obviously a lot of people are asking what's going on.
Meghan Main is the ACC chief executive and she's will
this Megan, very good morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Good morning Mike.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Now, twenty percent's a thing, isn't it. I mean, anyone
looking at a number like that will go hang on,
something material has happened. What is it?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yes, So, Mike, I want people to know first up
that this isn't about taking support away from people who
need it from ACC. And to put that eight thousand
in context, as of today, we've got almost twenty five
thousand ACC clients who've been receiving weekly compensation for over
a year. That includes both serious and non serious injuries.

(00:49):
So with serious injuries, these are our clients who will
need support from us for a long time, even their
whole life, and we will always be here for them.
These less serious injuries, though, things like strains and strains.
What we've seen over the last decade is a big
increase and the number of them who've still been receiving
weekly compensation a year or more after the injuries. But

(01:12):
there a range of reasons for this. That the thing
most in our control is our case management approach, and
I've spoken before about the changes we made back in
about twenty nineteen that meant a lot of these less
serious injury clients no longer had their own dedicated case manager.
So this contributed to more of them staying on weekly
compensation longer than you'd say is ideal. How the two years.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Ago, how rigid are you when you come to a
person who's got a strain when you look at their work,
do they have to stay within the work they were
doing or do you talk about things like changing careers,
changing training, moving down or that is that not within yourspics?

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yeah, that's a good question, And you know, this is
the importance of our one to one case management support,
so we can give people the rights at the right time.
And what we're looking to do is ideally help them
get back to their job if they don't still have
their job, get back to a level of work that
they can manage, or in some cases, get back to independence.

(02:15):
You know, really get back to living their life. There's
really strong evidence that if you can, then getting back
to or staying engaged in work has a really positive impact,
not just on your recovery, but your mental health.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Do you need to convince them of that? I noticed
in Britain over the weekend one of the ministers there said,
what we need people to do, because they've got a
massive sickness problem, like we do in this country, is
we need to convince people of the value of work
so that not working doesn't become a mindset. Is there
something in that?

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Look, you know, we get two manion claims a year.
They're not all weekly compensation. But the vast majority of
people want to do the right things. They want to
get better, they want to get back to living their life.
We can do our part. We've invested in more case
management by reinvesting savings from other parts of the business.
We've also invested in more fraud abuse detection. But we

(03:11):
do need every New Zealander playing their part, you know,
doing the right thing, being active in their recovery, working
with us, you know, and also taking care so that
they don't get injured in the first place.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Exactly, All right, nice to talk to Megan Meghan Main,
who's the ACC chief executive. Two million claims a year.
Goodn't say, I mean if there were three hundred million
of us fine, but there isn't. For more from the
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