Articles: ACC Claimants Support Group - ACC Focus
Wednesday, 21 December 2011 13:54
Independence of commissioner paramount
Has New Zealand's health watchdog lost its bark, asks Stuart McLennan.In 1974 New Zealand abandoned a tort-based system for compensating personal injuries in favour of a government-funded compensation system, ACC. The ACC legislation effectively prevents injured or otherwise aggrieved patients from pursuing legal action in court.The Cartwright Inquiry ultimately led to a new external mechanism for accountability in the New Zealand health system, with the creation of the Health and Disability Commissioner (HDC) in 1994,…
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Monday, 28 November 2011 21:29
ACC: Sends Sensitive Claimant file to strangers
After demanding an IT sweep of her file, an ACC claimant was told her file was "inadvertently released" to three organisations: Waikeria Prison, Gore Medical Centre, and the Auckland Family Doctors. "ACC Sensitive Claims Unit regrets to advise you that when the emails were being scanned and watermarked, a technical error arose which resulted in the documents being faxed to three fax numbers held in the memory of the multi function device."The claimant, an ACC…
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Sunday, 09 October 2011 20:10
Back to Basics
He's the Kapiti Coast physiotherapist who changed the treatment of back and neck pain worldwide – and kept prime minister Robert Muldoon on the road. Louise Thornley meets Robin McKenzie. An aching neck or back is no surprise in today's world – a whopping 80 per cent of us will be struck at some stage. What's more surprising is that many people can find relief with self-treatment – and Wellington is the birthplace of…
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Monday, 25 April 2011 07:25
Help for helpless Kurtis
A mother has won a six-year battle to get ACC to accept that medical error probably caused severe brain damage to her son. Penny Larkin's son Kurtis, starved of oxygen, was born dead at Hutt Hospital, and had to be resuscitated. Now aged 19, Kurtis weighs just 25 kilograms. He repeatedly suffers seizures. He cannot see, talk, walk, eat or go to the toilet by himself. "Mentally, he is a baby in a…
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