Causes of accidental/non illness death in NZ
Mark Wilson made this Official Information request to Accident Compensation Corporation
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From: Mark Wilson
Dear Accident Compensation Corporation,
Can you please provide me with the number of accidental (non illness) deaths in New Zealand by cause for
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020 if available (I understand this might not be formalized due to the requirements of verifying cause of death and coronial enquiries)
By accidental death/non illness deaths I'm referring to
Road Accidents
Homicide
Drowning
Falls (specific type if available, ie ladder, climbing)
Suicide
Hypothermia
Sporting accidents (skiing, horse riding, cycling)
Many thanks.
Mark
From: Government Services
Accident Compensation Corporation
Kia ora
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Government Engagement and Support Team
Government Engagement & Support, ACC
Te Kaporeihana Âwhina Hunga Whara
ACC / Governance / Justice Centre - Level 7
PO Box 242 / Wellington 6011 / [5]www.acc.co.nz
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From: Government Services
Accident Compensation Corporation
Data for Fatal Activities.xlsx
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GOV 013842 RESPONSE.pdf
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Kia ora Mark
Please find attached our response to your official information request
dated 2 September 2021. If you have any questions about the response you
can contact us at this [1]address, for all other matters please use our
contact form at: [2]https://www.acc.co.nz/contact/ alternatively give us a
call on 0800 101 996.
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Ngâ mihi
Sasha Wood, Manager OIA Services, ACC
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From: Mark Wilson
Dear Sasha.
Thanks for your reply.
This is quite frustrating as first I tried statistics NZ. You would think recording the cause of death particularly accidental death would be a reasonably important statistic but obviously not, they referred me to MOH and yourselves.
See their response below =
"Kia Ora Mark,
In regard to your enquiry about Cause of Death through Accidents we do not have cause of Death Statistics I suggest you try the Ministry of Health or Accident Compensation Commission:
www.health.govt.nz or acc.co.nz
Kind Regards
Jane"
I then tried MOH, who provided the same link to the data that wasn't broken down into anything useful when it comes to accidental death causes. It was focused on diseases mainly.
There must be someone who keeps a record of death in this way, you can't tell me the NZ government doesn't know how many die of
Road Accidents ( we have a road toll, do I need to do an indv request to MOT, I assume they will then refer me to you or MOH probably)
Homicide (Do I need to complete a OIR to the police I guess?)
Drowning (surely you would need to hold this, or do I need to trawl the water safety nz drowning report?)
Falls (specific type if available, ie ladder, climbing), (This must be held somewhere, can you advise where it might be?)
Suicide (I can get these from the coronial services page but again, having to hunt around many different departments and organizations for basic data on deaths is ridiculous)
Hypothermia (can't find this anywhere)
Sporting accidents (skiing, horse riding, cycling) (your data is the best but as you say not comprehensive)
all in all its a shit show trying to find this out, a sad reflection on NZ stats, we need to do better.
Yours sincerely,
Mark Wilson
From: Government Services
Accident Compensation Corporation
Kia ora
Thank you for contacting ACC; this is an automatic reply to confirm we
have received your email.
Depending on the nature of your request you may not receive a response for
up to 20 working days. We will try to respond your query as quickly as
possible.
Our [1]website provides up to date news and information about our work.
You can also follow us on [2]Facebook and [3]Twitter. Further information
about how to contact us is also available [4]here.
Ngâ mihi,
Government Engagement and Support Team
Government Engagement & Support, ACC
Te Kaporeihana Âwhina Hunga Whara
ACC / Governance / Justice Centre - Level 7
PO Box 242 / Wellington 6011 / [5]www.acc.co.nz
ACC cares about the environment -
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From: Government Services
Accident Compensation Corporation
Kia Ora Mark
Thank you for your email. I appreciate that you are disappointed with the
data sets we provided in our OIA response. Unfortunately, we are unable to
improve on these data sets for the reasons set out in our response to
you.
We suggested you contacted the Mortality Collection (MORT) because we
understood this agency would be best placed to provide you with complete
data sets, based on the following from MORT's website:
Collection methods – guide for providers
Each month Births, Deaths, and Marriages sends National Collections and
Reporting electronic death registration and stillbirth registration data.
The registration data is matched to Certificates of Causes of Death
(HP4720 and HP4721), sent in by funeral directors, and coroners’ reports
supplied by the Coronial Services Unit.
Additional information on underlying cause of death is obtained from
hospital discharge data in the National Minimum Dataset (NMDS), the New
Zealand Cancer Registry (NZCR), the NZ Transport Agency, Water Safety NZ,
the Internet, and from writing letters to certifying doctors, coroners,
and medical records officers in public hospitals.
The information on the website also suggests that customised datasets or
summary reports are available on request.
However, as noted in your email, if you are unable to get the data you are
seeking directly from MORT, you may have to consider contacting individual
agencies as you suggest.
Regretfully, ACC is unable to assist you further on this occasion.
Ngā mihi
Sasha Wood, Manager OIA Services, ACC
ACC cares about the environment – please don’t print this
email
unless
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Julie Chambers left an annotation ()
Hi Mark
As an alternative to ACC and statistics NZ data, Otago University Injury Prevention Research Unit https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/ipru and
https://psm-dm.otago.ac.nz/niqs/ use Ministry of Health data to provide a searchable database.
IPRU data is hospital admission data. It is retrieved from the record of a patient's hospital notes which are coded, de-identified, and sent to the MoH by DHBs - mostly for funding purposes. IPRU recieves downloads of this data and presents it for public use.
ACC data is 'claims data'. It is a record of the 'claims' ACC has received. It is not a record of how many people were injured.
ACC injury data comes from information written on the ACC45 form, which does not reliably attribute cause. The form has a voluntary 'free text' box. Those fields are searched for key words in order to count types of injury. If the claimant or their clinician, does not write how they received their injury, it is not recorded in ACC data.
Justice Woodhouse (whose report is the basis for ACC's existence) envisaged ACC would be a major force for preventing injury in New Zealand. ACC does not, and cannot deliver this function because the information it collects for its data is neither adequately specific, or sufficiently accurate, for it to develop and deliver proven injury prevention interventions in an accountable manner.
For example: ACC cannot accurately tell anyone how many NZ children are injured each year while they were riding as passengers in vehicles, as opposed to being injured from other traffic related causes, such as while they were pedestrians. Preventing pedestrian injuries is a very different task to preventing child passenger injury. When used correctly child car seats have been shown to reduce the incidence of child passenger injuries by about up to 80%.
ACC can provide the number of claims they received that mentioned (for example) terms like ''car seats' and some that mention 'traffic' or 'vehicle' (or similar terms). But they cannot tell you exactly how many children might have been kept safe had they had been correctly seated and secured in a child car seat.
Child pedestrian injures are prevented by other methods, such as building safe footpaths, road crossings, reduced speeds and road design that separates vehicles from pedestrians. Waka Kotahi spends a lot of money on preventing pedestrian injury, but very little (and decreasing) amounts of money promoting child restraint use.
The innuendo is that ACC should promote child car restraint use. Unfortunately the fact ACC cannot accurately say how many children might have been kept safe had they had been correctly seated and secured in a child car seat has important implications.
ACC staff claim their legislation requires they write 'business cases' to justify any of their prevention 'investments' in prevention. I am aware some ACC also claim the 'no fault' basis of ACC claims prevents the corporation from revisiting the ACC45 form and rewrite it to identify specific injury causes. In my opinion, both claims are very contestable and both claims could be negated by relatively simple changes to ACC legislation.
The lack of data that accurately indicates injury cause means ACC injury prevention staff are limited in the use their own data to create accurate business cases for investing in proven prevention activities, such as promoting the correct use of child car restraints. A cynical opinion might be, what ACC cannot count, they do not need to 'spend money' on preventing....
This lack of clarity about ACC injury data and the struggle the prevention section of ACC have in functioning at the level of competence and accountability with which they should be functioning, is not part of the original vision of ACC.
Justice Woodhouse believed ACC should have the capacity to collect and provide best 'injury cause' data in the world. ACC, in today's world of excellent and advanced data capacity, is a long way from that ideal.
Hopefully, one day this will improve.
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