In the last few years, it has come to my attention that ACC's approach to weekly compensation claims for self-employed people is somewhat challenged.

This has been highlighted directly with a couple of situations with another colleague of mine and an ACC claim I have lodged myself.

There is a combination of lack of intuitive interface design by those involved with making ACC's system and the understanding of the medical people that use it.

Fundamentally ACC is an administration organisation and GP's deal with the medicine and people. They are not great with paperwork.

I sat down with my GP and had a conversation about my injury and lodging my ACC claim so that we can get things progressed. In my case, it was minor, just a follow-up physio for me and some imaging and testing.

However, what this highlighted and is creating the challenge, was when my GP got to the screen that was about employment.

The screen was asking about whether you worked or not.

However, the way the screen was designed, it was asking a question with a tick box 'Paid employment' at the top, and under this, there was a drop down box which defaulted employee.

Now the doctor took one look at this and said you are not an employee; you run your own business? Which I answered yes.

Moreover, the doctor promptly unticked the paid employment box.
To be fair, to me at first glance, the right answer was to untick the box too.

Now looking at the screen, the doctor has done exactly what the screen looked to be asking for. However, with a deeper understanding of what sits behind this, by unticking the box, my doctor just told ACC I am not working.

Which for my weekly compensation, if I was disabled from the accidental injury, I would be registered as a non-worker and would not be paid weekly compensation.

When I stopped and talked about what that screen shows and discussed what it meant. We then re-ticked the paid employment box and clicked through the employee defaulted pull down. What we saw was self-employed and shareholder-employee, in addition to Employee. Which is what you would expect, as those are the designations ACC uses for workers.

Once we discussed what this all means, my doctor has a much better understanding of what this is all about and downstream effects. However, I have got to ask the question, how many others have been impacted by this with my doctor, let alone every other doctor in the country?

Which brings me to my colleague, as he has been on claim weekly compensation for about 6 to 7 weeks. He was telling me earlier on the same day I visited my GP, how it had been a hassle with both ACC and the GP, though mostly ACC.

With my colleague's situation, he had fun getting on weekly compensation claim. He has had to constantly push to get things done.

His situation was compounded by the GP assuming that because he was self-employed, he could randomly take time off and not worry about any financial support from ACC and didn't sign him off work, even though he could not actually work. Agh!

Then when you got to talk to ACC Claims, they did not even bother looking at the situation, given that he is on what we call CPX, Cover Plus Extra, they were asking for financial proof and billing stuff, which was disappointing.

The point of CPX is it is an agreed value. With agreed value coverage, comes the lack of requirement to prove financial loss, at any point in the ACC claim process.

What was interesting through the whole process for my colleague, he had hassles with ACC reverting back to the percentage based approach, and constantly had to swap systems for some unknown reason to deal with the CPX claim. So it sounds like ACC need to tidy up their act.

Moreover, to throw another spanner in the mix, a recent client who was injured in hospital, also had his GP not sign him off work.

I am not entirely sure what was reported back to ACC on the screen I discussed above, in work or not, just the initial medical certificate issued was fit for work duties. Which is ironic given picking up a T-Shirt was impossible for this client let alone doing any other work.

I get this might be partly the doctor's perception of self-employment, you can take any time off you like, and it does not really matter which is not the case.

The reality is a good number self-employed are self-employed to work 70 hours a week to avoid working for somebody else for 40 hours a week.

Though the truth be told, self-employed do have the flexibility of hours, but they do not necessarily have the flexibility of work, they still need to do the hours.

With ACC‘s recent restructure they have consolidated call centres and removed relationship manages in the field. We are expecting ACC customer experience to get worse, not better.

The reality, along with their own ideas which haven’t necessarily been aligned with the real world, looks like yeah sure it might be a cost reduction, but client experience is going to be worse for everyone.

What this means for us, as we are going to be the contact point that is going to make sense. We are going to be in a position to get the outcome that you are looking for.

When dealing with ACC, it might be about accessing treatment and claims, or it could be that you are self-employed and you need some help with managing your levies.

Making sure you are on the right levy codes, so you are paying the right levies, and you have coverage that you can rely on. We can cover all of this and generally make life much easier.

So if you do not have somebody in your corner for ACC claims or managing your levies, give us a call, we are experts in ACC, and we will get it sorted and done for you.

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