Way to cut ACC costs is reduce accidents

The only real way to cut ACC costs is to cut accident rates, says Paul Jarvie, Manager of Occupational Health and Safety for the Employers & Manufacturers Association (Northern).

"The blow out in ACC levies means ACC and the Department of Labour are failing in their injury prevention initiatives," Mr Jarvie said.

"The ACC's rehabilitation measures are even more inefficient than its own forecasts.

"But the furore over the ACC costs blowout hasn't mentioned a word about preventing accidents in the first place, though it's the major effective way to reduce the costs of ACC claims.

"To try and prune costs at the treatment end fails to understand what drives the rate of claims, which is the number and severity of accidents.

"The amount that can be pared from ACC's administration costs or by fine tuning treatment costs is insignificant compared to its total turnover of $1.5 billion.

"To make ACC sustainable, whether part of it is open to competition from the private sector or not, and disrupt the continuous game of claims cost catch up is to keep an intense focus and investment on accident prevention."

ENDS

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