ACC bullies and red tape - when forgery is not fraud

You may recall there was a recent story where an ACC Case Manager had forged a man's initials on an ACC Individual Rehabilitation Plan (IRP)while the man was in Australia.

This is a story of red tape and dodginess. For the first time, a fuller story is published, here.

I was told that the case manager received the plan and noted that not all pages of the plan were initialled, as is required. The Case Manager initialled the remaining one herself after having a meeting with "an undisclosed person". Her dodgy actions had the full backing of the management of ACC Palmerston North, according to the man's advocate.

The media found out about the story and made some inquiries . ACC made some inquiries too - in fact it had a "robust inquiry" - so rubust that it decided it that no fraud had occurred and therefore no apology was necessary. This is despite the matter going to the ACC Fraud unit. The Corporation got a handwriting expert with 12 years' experience - at a cost of at least $500 - to analyse the initials on the IRP. The specialist found that the initials were not the claimant's initials. However prior to that, the case manager offered to provide some handwriting samples - free of charge too. This was declined by ACC.

Why? The analyst would have determined that the handwriting was the case managers and ACC didn’t want to pay for that advice - that's why. That’s how "robust" the inquiry was.

But the Case Manager contacted ACC's serious fraud and support manager to advise that " there is a possibility that she may have accidentally written the initials on the document herself". This is according to an internal memo ACC would not release to me.

In other words, she did it, but was told by ACC to keep it quiet. It would have stayed that way if the media had not found out.

But after the hand writing analysis, ACC then told the claimants advocate, Mervyn Castle that claimant himself might have done it.

ACC Minister Ruth Dyson was written to twice regarding this matter by Mr Castle, who told me that he did not have the courtesy of a reply.

ACC considers that the matter wasn’t fraudulent. Why ? Because there was "no pecuniary interest". So why did the Case Manager do it? No-one will say. The Case Manager has since left ACC.

Many ACC rehabilitation plans that are drawn up by case managers and signed by claimants are illegal. This is because the Corporation must provide appropriate vocational and social rehabilitation before a rehab plan is signed by a claimant. Rehabilitation plans must identify the assessments to be done, yet many assessments are a surprise to claimants and are not noted on rehabilitation plans. This too is against the law. Most rehabilitation does not happen until after a rehabilitation plan is signed, if it happens at all.

Claimants can legally refuse to sign rehabilitation plans if they have not been provided rehabilitation under the Act. Some will not require rehabilitation, yet a rehabilitation plan doesn’t have to be signed until a claimant has been on ACC for 13 weeks

The Corporation announced this week that it had apologised to the man - six months later. It was the week after media got hold of the story -and after ACC Minister Ruth Dyson said
ACC should apologise.

So I went to ACC to get a copy of their release to the media.

Tomorrow I`ll tell you why ACC refused to give it to me.

You won't believe it. However feel free to guess in comments - and if you are first to guess correctly, I`ll give you a chocolate fish.