Crucial issues for all injured New Zealanders

NEWS RELEASE
New Zealand Society of Physiotherapists
1 September 2008

Crucial issues for all injured New Zealanders

The ACC Futures seminar today examined issues of crucial importance to the treatment of injured New Zealanders.

“We take ACC for granted,” said the President of the New Zealand Society of Physiotherapists, Jonathan Warren. “Because we’ve had ACC in New Zealand for more than thirty years we tend to see its faults and forget what an amazingly comprehensive, no-fault, 24-hour scheme it is. We’re streets ahead of accident compensation in other countries. And now it could be under threat.”

Physiotherapists, as the main rehabilitation providers for ACC, know better than most people the failings and the strengths of ACC, Mr Warren said. “We’re the first to criticise some aspects of ACC. However, we also see its major importance to our patients who have been injured.”

The New Zealand Society of Physiotherapists appeals to the National Party to engage with physiotherapists and other treatment providers regarding their policy on choice and competition for workplace injury coverage. “There were terrible results when this policy was introduced last time,” said Mr Warren. He said that physiotherapists saw many examples of patients who were so confused about how to claim coverage that they sometimes just gave up in frustration, or alternatively delayed seeking treatment and therefore hindered their recovery.

“It was great to hear Sir Owen Woodhouse at the seminar,” said Mr Warren. “This is the man whose vision established ACC, and now in his 90s he sees even more clearly the necessity for a social insurance scheme as opposed to commercial schemes.”

ENDS

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