GOV 011745 RESPONSE.pdf

23 July 2021

Robbie Charles
[FYI request #15807 email]

Tēnā koe Robbie

Your Official Information Act request, reference: GOV-011745
Thank you for your email of 16 June 2021, asking for the following information under the Official Information
Act 1982 (the Act):

With reference to the table published on the data.govt.nz website on 4 September 2020, regarding spinal
injury related claims.
For each of the following injury types, please tell me the proportion of claimants that are Maori in the
years 2015 to 2020 (by calendar year)

•  High Level Tetraplegic
•  Low Level Tetraplegic / High Level Paraplegic
•  Paraplegic

•  Incomplete Spinal Cord Injuries

For the following payments please tell me the average (mean and median) payments to claimants that
are Maori, and to claimants overall, for each of the years 2015 to 2020 (by calendar year)
•  Other Back and Spine Injuries - Entitlement Payments
•  Other Back and Spine Injuries - Other Payments
•  Other Back and Spine Injuries - Medical Payments Only
•  Other Back and Spine Injuries - No Payments


Published data
The table below was uploaded onto the data.govt.nz website on 4 September 2020. The data showed the
number of spinal injury related claims between 1 January 2015 and 31 July 2020, broken down by a severity
profile listed from fatal claims to ‘other back and spine injury’ claims. Please note the payments section
relates to the number of claims that received a payment. It does not relate to costs.

Table 1: New spinal injury related claims registered between 1 January 2015 and 31 July 2020 broken
down by injury severity and calendar year.

Registration Calendar Year
Spinal Injury Severity
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
Fatal
20
21
19
28
25
10
High Level Tetraplegic
5
6
6
7
7
<4
Low Level Tetraplegic / High Level Paraplegic
<4
<4
<4
<4
4
<4
Paraplegic
30
31
22
19
38
6
Incomplete Spinal Cord Injuries
15
15
18
22
10
5
Other Back and Spine Injuries - Entitlement Payments
17,082
18,032
18,383
19,254
19,325
8,409
Other Back and Spine Injuries - Other Payments
307
304
251
191
225
120
Other Back and Spine Injuries - Medical Payments Only
304,859
316,196
318,575
326,972
337,520
160,690
Other Back and Spine Injuries - No Payments
12,057
12,787
13,172
13,675
14,134
23,297
As was stated in the notes attached to the above table, “counts of less than four have been replaced by <4, in
the interests of client privacy”.

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The table below shows the proportion of spinal injury claims for Māori to non- Māori.

Table 2: Proportion of spinal injury claims for Māori clients registered between 1 January 2015 and 31
December 2021 broken down by injury severity, ethnicity and calendar year

Registration Calendar Year
Spinal Injury Severity
Ethnicity
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
Fatal
Māori
14%
19%
10%
7%
24%
8%
Non-Māori
86%
81%
90%
93%
76%
92%
High Level Tetraplegic
Māori
0%
33%
67%
29%
29%
20%
Non-Māori
100%
67%
33%
71%
71%
80%
Low Level Tetraplegic / High Level Paraplegic
Māori
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
33%
Non-Māori
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
67%
Paraplegic
Māori
29%
13%
14%
25%
21%
20%
Non-Māori
71%
87%
86%
75%
79%
80%
Incomplete Spinal Cord Injuries
Māori
13%
19%
6%
23%
30%
10%
Non-Māori
87%
81%
94%
77%
70%
90%
Other Back and Spine Injuries - Entitlement Payments
Māori
13%
14%
14%
14%
15%
14%
Non-Māori
87%
86%
86%
86%
85%
86%
Other Back and Spine Injuries - Other Payments
Māori
12%
9%
7%
9%
10%
11%
Non-Māori
88%
91%
93%
91%
90%
89%
Other Back and Spine Injuries - Medical Payments Only
Māori
10%
10%
10%
10%
9%
9%
Non-Māori
90%
90%
90%
90%
91%
91%
Other Back and Spine Injuries - No Payments
Māori
19%
19%
20%
20%
20%
19%
Non-Māori
81%
81%
80%
80%
80%
81%
Total
Māori
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
Non-Māori
90%
90%
90%
90%
90%
90%

The table below shows the total average costs per claim, broken down by injury severity groups and Maori
and non-Maori.

Please note that, particularly in the case of serious injury, large claim costs can be due to a single claim which
can distort the average costs per claim.

Table 3: Average cost per claim to date for spinal injuries registered between 1 January 2015 and 31
December 2020, broken down by injury severity, ethnicity and calendar year

Registration Calendar Year
Spinal Injury Severity
Ethnicity
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
Fatal
Māori
$227,025
$151,008
$784,256
$114,362
$40,484
$5,177
Non-Māori
$151,607
$51,424
$57,659
$48,696
$58,090
$34,099
High Level Tetraplegic
Māori
-
$3,051,175
$1,727,931
$1,111,753
$1,509,530
$331,335
Non-Māori
$1,703,803
$2,296,590
$2,942,526
$1,708,041
$797,970
$598,893
Low Level Tetraplegic / High
Māori
-
-
-
-
-
$159,140
Level Paraplegic
Non-Māori
$617,397
$2,620,407
$1,451,945
$507,436
$1,125,524
$441,879

Registration Calendar Year
Spinal Injury Severity
Ethnicity
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
Paraplegic
Māori
$1,120,624
$986,690
$1,053,316
$702,914
$559,340
$137,315
Non-Māori
$901,801
$958,785
$878,064
$832,379
$559,085
$366,050
Incomplete Spinal Cord
Māori
$597,813
$422,385
$84,488
$405,452
$242,618
$89,172
Injuries
Non-Māori
$487,918
$323,676
$427,530
$431,442
$328,152
$189,678
Other Back and Spine Injury
Māori
$18,524
$17,474
$15,227
$17,223
$16,242
$12,769
Claims with Entitlement
Payments
Non-Māori
$18,294
$17,597
$17,631
$17,505
$15,715
$12,855
Accident Compensation Corporation
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Other Back and Spine Injury
Māori
$2,037
$4,854
$3,020
$2,278
$2,090
$5,717
Claims with Other Payments
but no Entitlement
Payments
Non-Māori
$2,500
$2,710
$2,917
$2,907
$4,235
$4,250
Other Back and Spine Injury
Māori
$212
$215
$227
$231
$250
$238
Claims with Medical
Payments Only
Non-Māori
$302
$311
$336
$346
$353
$338
Other Back and Spine Injury
Māori
-
-
-
-
-
-
Claims with No Payments
Non-Māori
-
-
-
-
-
-

Ethnicity
ACC ethnicity data is prioritised, meaning that a claim can only have one ethnicity based on a client’s
selections on the ACC45 claim lodgement form. A maximum of six ethnicities can be chosen by the client but
the system prioritises these where Māori, regardless of other ethnicities are classified as Māori. Non- Māori
includes all clients that did not put Māori as any of their ethnicity options or did not provide an ethnicity.

Fatal claims
A single claim can have multiple injuries. Fatal claims do not identify the specific injury that resulted in the
fatality. For this reason, payments attributed to fatal claims could include payments related to other injuries.

ACC is not  able  to provide comprehensive  fatality statistics as ACC data is collected on the basis of claims
made. Our data may not represent the total number of fatalities related to accidents for the following reasons:
1.  Many people are not aware that they can make a claim related to an accidental death of a family member
and therefore ACC only ever receives claims for a subset of accidental deaths.
2.  If a person who has an open claim with ACC dies of their injuries, or other causes, ACC is not necessarily
notified of this.

For  more  accurate  fatality  data,  we  suggest  that  you  contact  the  Ministry  of  Health  Mortality  Collection
(MORT), which classifies the underlying cause of death for all deaths registered in New Zealand.  MORT uses
a range of sources (Police, funeral director, coroner, hospital records) to validate data reliability.
More information on MORT is available on www.health.govt.nz/nz-health-statistics/national-collections-and-
surveys/collections/mortality-collection or by contacting [email address].
In  addition,  accurate  data  for  workplace  fatalities  is  available  from  WorkSafe  NZ.  It  can  be  contacted  on
[email address].

Notes about the data
•  Costs do not include Public Health Acute Services payments. Acute treatment in public hospitals for
covered claims is provided by an annual service agreement between ACC and the Ministry of Health,
and is funded by bulk payments from ACC to the Crown. The costs are not attributed to individual
claims.
•  Costs are exclusive of GST.
•  Claims managed by accredited employers are not included as ACC holds little data about these
claims.
•  The data were extracted on 23 June 2021 and may differ if extracted at a later date.

How to contact us
If you have any questions, you can email me at [email address].

Accident Compensation Corporation
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GOV-011745

If you are not happy with this response, you have the right to make a complaint to the Ombudsman.
Information about how to do this is available at www.ombudsman.parliament.nz or by phoning 0800 802
602.

Nāku iti noa, nā

Sasha Wood
Manager Official Information Act Services
Government Engagement & Support
Accident Compensation Corporation
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