Hearing Damage is About Best Practice Too

Hearing Damage is About Best Practice Too

ACC’s treatment of noise-damaged hearing should be about best practice in rehabilitating injured workers, not draconian policy, the National Foundation for the Deaf said today.

“The whole focus of ACC is rehabilitating people injured at work and getting them back on the job,” NFD Chief Executive Louise Carroll said.

“However, when it comes to noise injury ACC is introducing policies such as an artificial thres-hold which is denying rehabilitation and introducing part-charges which will see injured people having to pay potentially thousands of dollars.

“Treating hearing injury on the merits of the case is best practice – bringing in draconian policies is not.”

“Merits-based rehabilitation and good budgeting are not mutually exclusive.”

ACC Minister Nick Smith told Parliament today the corporation’s treatment of noise injury was about “policy”, and ACC had to cut costs.

He was answering from Labour MP David Parker who asked Dr Smith whether his recent admission that ACC had handled the issue of counselling for sexual abuse victims badly made him question whether ACC had also treated victims of hearing loss badly.

Dr Smith said the issue of treatment of sexual abuse victims was about “best clinical practice”, whereas the issue of hearing loss was about policy.

He said ACC covered hearing loss caused by accidents but a threshold for rehabilitating hearing injuries was necessary because the corporation had to cut costs.

Mrs Carroll said the whole point of ACC was rehabilitating injured workers, and that relied on best practice.

“Best practice is about getting people with noise injury the treatment they need,” she said.

“When it comes to older people, ACC is not treating age-related hearing loss or other conditions – it is treating bona fide noise injuries that are going through rigorous assessment. Any collateral benefit to other conditions comes at no cost to ACC.

“Best practice is about treating each case on its merits. Surely we are better off getting people with sound injury back at work and paying taxes than denying them cover through artificial limits and policies.”

ENDS

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