Information Overkill
Apparently ACC have been accused of asking claimants for unnecessary information, according to the Privacy Commission. They cite the fact that rape victims are asked for their previous medical history and their employment details.
In fairness, you would get the same thing happening with any insurance company, as their forms are always one-size-fits-nothing. If the insurance industry had forms for each type of claim (barring broad categories like car insurance and household insurance), they would substantially increase their processing costs. Imaging if you had one claim form for theft of a vehicle, one for an accident involving one car, one for an accident involving two…
Most doctors just leave the irrelevant information blank, or, if the software doesn’t allow a blank, just write nonsense. It is annoying to keep having to tick the “no time off work” box for school children and fill in the “occupation” for 3-year-olds as “child”, but that’s just the way it is. My experience is that ACC rarely ask you for this information if you refuse to fill it in and they don’t slow down your claim because they don’t have it.
This is simply what happens when you expect a large, state-owned insurance scheme to be a jack of all trades and deal with rape and abuse as if they were accidents. They may not fit the process but if you have a giant hammer everything looks like a nail.
You should see the kind of information ACC collect about you from your GP. Bet you didn’t realise you were authorising them to collect whatever they want from your medical records when you signed your ACC form, did you?
Related posts:
- Accidental Baby I have a great deal of misgiving about the attempt...
- Accidental Rape? The battle between counsellors treating sexual abuse victims and ACC...
- No Help At All Some newspaper articles cause me to wonder what is NOT...
- The Right to Sue ACC takes away our right to sue people in the...
- ACC and Sex The Frog continues his series on ACC changes, complaining this...
Oct 7 09 7:57 am
According to a major study by the Ministry Of Womens Affairs, only 13% of rape cases result in a conviction, only 66% of complaints were considered valid and only 31% prosecuted.
With stats like these I would be horrified if ACC did not seek quite a bit of personal detail before deciding on a payout.
Over the years I’ve collected newspaper articles by the odd cop who has burst into print about how much time is wasted on false rape complaints.. and how frequent they are. The MWA study seems to validate these comments and it seems to me we should be keeping a close eye on ACC to determine if its payouts are out of kilter with valid complaints from police records.
JC
I think the Privacy Commission’s beef is that some information collected is not relevant at all. But as I said, this is common for insurance companies.
Oct 7 09 11:45 pm
That’s the problem with insurance companies, they don’t exist to protect their customers but to make profits. So if you’re looking for sympathy from then, you are looking in the wrong place.