Official Information Act Request
Al Vaccination Injury Analysis to December 2021
Reference IPA-5273
Background information about treatment injury data
Before responding to your request, we would first like to provide you with some background information about
treatment injuries.
ACC has provided cover for treatment injuries since 1 July 2005. The treatment injury provisions replaced the
medical misadventure provisions of the Accident Compensation Act 2001, to bring it more in line with the no-fault
nature of the scheme.
A treatment injury is a personal injury caused as a result of seeking or receiving medical treatment from, or at the
direction of, a registered health professional. In order to fulfil the criteria for cover, the person must have
suffered a personal injury and there must be a clear causal link between the treatment and the injury, and the
injury must not be a necessary part or ordinary consequence of the treatment.
When considering treatment injury data, it is important to note that the number of claims lodged with ACC
cannot be taken as an accurate indication of the occurrence of injury during treatment or the quality of care. This
is because, among other reasons, not all occurrences of injury during treatment are lodged with ACC.
Context
Treatment injury (TI) data is available from 1 July 2005, when treatment injury provisions came into law.
The ACC website contains further information on treatment injury
https://www.acc.co.nz/for-
providers/treatment-safety/.
A full overview of treatment injury in public and private surgical hospitals and general practice settings is available
at
https://www.acc.co.nz/assets/provider/ACC7971-Supporting-Treatment-Safety-2021.pdf.
Claim lodgement rates are dependent on several factors. They can be influenced by:
•
population demography i.e. the characteristics of the resident population, visitors and referred
patients
•
health status of the population treated
•
what level of facility the organisation provides i.e. tertiary versus secondary
•
familiarity of health providers or clients in recognising and/or lodging treatment injury claims.
Privacy
ACC does not routinely disclose low value numbers related to claims. Accordingly, we have noted some values
below as being fewer than four.
Withholding in this way is necessary to protect the privacy of these individuals under section 9(2)(a) of the Act. In
doing so, we have considered the public interest in making the information available and have determined that it
does not outweigh the need to protect the privacy of these persons.
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.
Vaccine related treatment injury claims
The data below was extracted on 6 December 2021 for treatment injury claims lodged with ACC between 1 July
2005 and 5 December 2021, where the treatment event was
vaccination or
injection/medications, adverse
reaction/medication error and where the medication type was recorded as
vaccine.
These fields are only completed when cover for the claim is decided. Given the active Covid-19 vaccination
campaign the all vaccine figures provided have been supplemented by a text search of the claim forms received
by ACC which mention
Comirnaty (the name of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine), or included the terms
covid or
Pfizer and
vacc. This text search allows us to identify claims that have been lodged but where cover has
not been decided. Free text search methods are not reliable data extraction methods and can result in anomalies
in the data so claims identified by this method above have been manually reviewed and some false positive
matches removed.
Ethnicity
The ethnicity data provided below is based on ACC’s ‘prioritised ethnicity’ data field. This method reduces the
six ethnic responses to a single response by a system of “prioritisation” where: Māori regardless of other
ethnicities listed is classified as Māori; Pacific peoples with any other response other than Māori is classified as
Pacific; Asian peoples with any other response other than Māori and Pacific are classified as Asian; Other ethnicity
regardless of any other response other than Māori, Asian or Pacific is classified as Other. Those that listed
European and did not list Māori, Pacific, Asian or Other are classified as European.
ACC reports ethnicity using a different method to Statistics New Zealand. Care must be taken when comparing
ACC’s ethnicity data with other Government agencies or census data.
Data
The treatment injury data provided below was extracted on 6 December 2021 and includes vaccination claims
between 1 July 2005 and 5 December 2021 and Covid-19 vaccination claims lodged up to 5 December 2021.
During this period ACC has received 4,556 claims for injuries relating to vaccinations. 2,153 claims had been
accepted, 1,876 had been declined and 527 had yet to be decided. The fol owing tables break down these
numbers by the sex, age and ethnicity of the claimants.
Sex
Sex
Accepted
Declined
Pending Decision
Total
Female
1,435
1,222
352
3,009
Male
718
654
175
1,547
Total
2,153
1,876
527
4,556
The table above shows that females are far more likely than males to have lodged a claim for a vaccination
treatment injury. Claims for female clients represent 66% of claims lodged.
Age Band
Age Band
Accepted
Declined
Pending Decision
Total
0-41
669
452
0
1,121
5-9
65
40
0
105
10-14
107
124
8
239
15-19
77
100
21
198
20-24
81
79
27
187
25-29
97
79
44
220
30-34
109
71
56
236
35-39
110
85
56
251
40-44
94
101
58
253
45-49
148
115
64
327
50-54
103
109
46
258
55-59
97
109
49
255
60-64
95
115
37
247
65-69
117
111
21
249
70-74
68
88
19
175
75-79
54
45
11
110
80-84
35
37
6
78
85 plus
27
16
4
47
Total
2,153
1,876
527
4,556
1 Includes fewer than four claims where the age was not known.
Ethnicity
Ethnicity
Accepted
Declined
Pending Decision
Total
Māori
269
214
60
543
Pacific Peoples
134
64
16
214
Asian
218
147
34
399
European
1,387
1,300
370
3,057
Other/Unknown
145
151
47
343
Total
2,153
1,876
527
4,556
Accepted Injuries
Treatment injuries are confirmed, and the primary injury is recorded when a claim is decided. The following table
shows the primary injury recorded for the accepted vaccination claims decided by 6 December 2021.
Primary Injury
Al Accepted Claims
Allergic
Reaction
566
Cellulitis
490
Infection
218
Adverse Drug Reaction
138
Anaphylactic Reaction
118
Haematoma - Bruising
109
Abscess
57
Contusion
56
Sprain
45
Nerve Damage
43
Skin Damage/Injury/Tear
35
Bursitis
30
Shoulder Damage/Injury
26
Inflammation
19
Cardiac Injury
16
Tendonitis/Tendinopathy
15
Other
172
Total
2,153
Severity of Injuries
Measuring the impact of an injury on a person is challenging. ACC and others use the overall cost of a treatment
injury claim as an indicator of the severity of the injury because more costly claims are likely to indicate claims
where there has been a more severe impact on the person injured. While not always directly related, overall cost
is one measure of severity and impact.
Fewer than four vaccination claims have been lodged with ACC which have resulted in a fatal injury.
Payments per Claim
The fol owing table shows the number of accepted claims grouped by the total payments made per claim to
5 December 2021.
Payments to 5 December 2021
Number of Accepted Claims
No payment to date
267
Up to $100
894
Over $100 to $500
773
Over $500 to $1,000
117
Over $1,000 to $5,000
62
Over $5,000 to $10,000
10
Over $10,000 to $50,000
25
Over $50,000
5
Total
2,153
As of 5 December 2021, ACC had made payments on accepted vaccination claims totalling $2,207,739
Claims by Month
The following table shows the number of vaccination injury claims lodged with ACC by month up to 5 December 2021.
Fin Year
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Total
2005/06
21
33
22
14
11
10
5
5
10
16
17
9
173
2006/07
5
5
4
11
20
8
5
12
19
18
29
10
146
2007/08
14
8
4
5
11
9
6
8
14
34
21
12
146
2008/09
11
7
10
14
5
17
9
12
24
17
26
11
163
2009/10
17
11
14
10
12
8
7
10
36
40
20
13
198
2010/11
16
15
13
6
8
10
8
11
22
21
19
19
168
2011/12
7
10
13
13
17
9
4
10
22
24
25
24
178
2012/13
12
11
10
21
14
9
8
15
25
34
31
21
211
2013/14
9
7
11
11
13
9
8
10
27
29
38
16
188
2014/15
20
15
13
15
16
7
15
18
17
30
34
20
220
2015/16
17
18
21
13
10
12
11
13
22
31
36
19
223
2016/17
23
25
21
15
18
9
17
10
20
24
44
26
252
2017/18
17
18
19
20
20
9
10
17
12
27
40
28
237
2018/19
27
22
12
15
13
16
11
20
28
28
28
23
243
2019/20
23
16
16
18
21
15
15
18
32
20
27
26
247
2020/21
22
20
15
13
15
8
8
11
30
36
88
84
350
2021/22
73
131
262
311
392
44.1
1,213.1
Total
334
372
480
525
616
209
147
200
360
429
523
361
4,556
.1 To 5 December 2021 only
Time to Lodgement
Some vaccination injuries are immediately apparent whereas other injuries may take some time to become
apparent or be considered as a possible treatment injury. The table below shows the time between the accident
date (assumed to be the date of vaccination in most cases) and the date when the claim is lodged with ACC.
Time to Lodgement
Number of Claims
Time to Lodgement
Number of Claims
0 days
416
21 days
37
1 days
716
22 days
34
2 days
432
23 days
19
3 days
346
24 days
31
4 days
273
25 days
25
5 days
220
26 days
16
6 days
162
27 days
24
7 days
152
4 weeks
157
8 days
101
5 weeks
90
9 days
69
6 weeks
98
10 days
77
7 weeks
83
11 days
50
8 weeks
65
12 days
59
9 weeks
65
13 days
48
10 weeks
43
14 days
59
11 weeks
39
15 days
41
12 weeks
29
16 days
32
3 months
100
17 days
26
4 months
50
18 days
37
5 months
26
19 days
36
6 months +
148
20 days
25
Total
4,556
The table above is illustrated in the chart below.
Number of Vaccination Claims Received by Time to Lodgement
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
DHB
The DHB has been provided below based on the DHB of Treatment where this has been identified and by the DHB
of Residence of the client.
District Health Board Region
DHB of Treatment
DHB of Residence
Aucklan d
591
421
Bay of Plenty
173
217
Canterbury
401
499
Capital & Coast
285
302
Counties Manukau
232
424
Hawkes Bay
154
179
Hutt Valley
91
152
Lakes
41
62
Mid Central
146
185
Nelson Marlborough
134
163
Northland
164
187
South Canterbury
47
54
Southern
230
315
Tairāwhiti
30
44
Taranaki
122
174
Waikato
342
446
Wairarapa
53
53
Waitematā
263
542
West Coast
29
30
Whanganui
66
94
Overseas
11
0
Unknown
951
13
Total
4,556
4,556
The DHB of Treatment is often not confirmed until the claim is decided hence the large number of claims
recorded with no known DHB of Treatment.
Document Outline
