A study of work related injury reporting in New Zealand : reconciling serious harm notifications and ACC claims data : 114.899 thesis [presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management in Occupational Safety and Health at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand]

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine whether there is a significant difference between workplace serious harm accidents that are reported to the Department of Labour and workplace injury claims that are made to the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) that would be classed as serious harm injury for the ACC Classification Unit (CU) Fruit and Vegetable Wholesale? The average number of ACC acute serious harm injury claims made per year for the years 2004-2009 was 32.17 (2dp). Of these identified claims 3.17 (9.85%) average per year, were reported to the Department of Labour. This result proved to be significantly different with a 99.9% confidence level. A reverse correlation comparing serious harm accident reports submitted to the Department of Labour found the average annual number of reports for the same time period was 29.33 (2dp), of these reported accidents an annual average of 7.50 (26.05%: annual average percentage) had a corresponding ACC injury claim; of the correlated injury claims an annual average of 4.33 (14.76%: annual average percentage) would not have been classed as serious harm injury claims, leaving 3.17 (10.81%) serious harm reports that correlated with ACC serious harm injury claims. Using ACC data as the external comparison, it was shown that the ACC data for acute serious harm injury claims did not correlate well with the Department of Labour serious harm accident data, the monitoring authority. This indicates that many workplace serious harm injuries are not being reported to the Department of Labour. Using the Department of Labour data to get a reverse correlation it was found that a degree of over reporting was occurring for the same time period, accidents were being reported that did not have a corresponding ACC injury claim.