27 May 2020

Daniel Ryan
[FYI request #12763 email]

Tēnā koe Daniel

Your Official Information Act request, reference: GOV-004762
Thank you for your email of 2 May 2020, asking for the fol owing information under the Official
Information Act 1982 (the Act):

1.  For the 2019/20 financial year, the amount of money ACC spent on funding acupuncture
treatments, broken down by injury by body part as follows:
Head, Neck, Shoulders, Arms, Elbows, Wrists, Hands, Spinal, Torso, Hips, Legs, Knees, Ankles
and Feet.
2.  Any more specific breakdowns of acupuncture spending by injury that are available for this
period, for example, categorised by site and type of injury.
3.  All previous and current predictions of spending on acupuncture treatments by ACC.
  I also request any updates/corrections to the 2018/19 financial year.

Information on ACC’s acupuncture spend is attached (Questions 1 and 2)
Please find information on ACC’s spend on acupuncture by injury site (head, neck etc) and injury
diagnosis in the attached Excel file. Please refer to the notes provided in the attachment when
reviewing the information.

Budget for acupuncture is provided below (Question 3)
In terms of ‘predictions of spending’, ACC calculates an estimate (budget) of the spend for various
claim-related costs for each new financial year (including treatment services). Please find below the
budgets we calculated for acupuncture for the financial years 2016/17 to 2020/21.

Please note that the costs provided for 2019/20 will differ to that previously provided as the current
estimate is inclusive of 10 months of actual spend for the 2019/20 financial year.

ACC’s budgets for acupuncture (ex GST)
Financial year
2016/17
2017/18
2018/19
2019/20
2020/21
Budget
$31.90m
$38.43m
$43.27m
$42.38m
$49.42m

Privacy
We have suppressed some cost information as a precaution against the possibility that individual
claims, and cost information attributable to those claims, may be identified. In this case, we have
used the value ‘<$100’ for any spend less than $100 and have suppressed some figures (indicated by
‘..’) to ensure that exact amounts cannot be calculated from the totals.

This measure has been taken to protect personal privacy and is made under section 9(2)(a) of the
Act. We consider that the public interest in the specific figures does not outweigh the individual
privacy interests.

GOV-004762

Queries about our response
If you have any questions, you can email me at [email address].

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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