ACC Minister Carmel Sepuloni needs to front up to New Zealanders and explain what she’s doing to fix the failing Next Generation Case Management system, National’s ACC spokesperson Simon Watts says.

“The Next Generation Case Management was touted by ACC as a way to increase productivity, save costs, improve workloads and make the organisation more client centred.  As recently as last month officials were in Select Committee singing the praises of this new approach.

“But reports today paint a different picture. ACC staff are overwhelmed and overworked by the system, which is already over budget and under delivering.

“Staff are dealing with a workload involving 150 cases each and the new approach is causing staff to focus less on the client. Clearly the officials touting the new system are disconnected from the reality of their own organisation.

“The Next Generation Case Management has significantly blown its budget. It started at between $28 to $53 million and now it’s blown out to $74 million. This is a significant increase for a system that was meant to save ACC money.

“ACC Providers are also rightly concerned about ACC’s service. Call service rates for providers dropped below 10 per cent in April this year and almost one in four calls were abandoned that same month.

“Minister Sepuloni needs to be seriously questioning the viability of ACC’s Next Generation Case Management system as it’s demonstrably failed at every benchmark.”