12 October 2023
AS Van Wey
[FYI request #23315 email]
Kia ora
Your Official Information Act request, reference: GOV-027796
Thank you for your email of 14 September 2023, asking for various information and documentation under
the Official Information Act 1982 (the Act).
Providing reports consistent with the High Court Rules
We provided a copy of the T140, an agreement that ACC sends to providers whenever we seek external
clinical advice on a Treatment Injury claim, to you in our previous response of 17 July 2023 (our ref: GOV-
026139). Please refer to page 5 of the T140, where the High Court Rules 2016 are referred to.
Claimant consent to obtain external clinical advice
Please refer to the first page of the appendix for GOV-026139, specifically the heading ‘We’ve got consent
to request this information’. Further documents have been sent to you explaining ACC’s process for gaining
consent to collect information in our response of 28 September (our ref: GOV-027753).
Notice to clients that ACC is seeking external clinical advice or a medical case review, ACC has received
the report, and the next steps
The following documents have been attached as Appendix 1:
• Seek external clinical advice
• Arrange Medical Case Review (MCR) Assessment
Request for ACC to comment as to whether a cover assessor can make a decision to not cover a
Treatment Injury claim in various situations
Under the Act a distinction exists between a request for information already known and held by an agency
(official information), versus a request for an agency to form an opinion, provide an explanation or
comment, and thus create new information to answer a request (not official information). This part of your
requests asks ACC to provide a comment on a hypothetical situation and is therefore not considered to be
requesting official information under the Act. Accordingly, we are refusing to respond to this part of your
request.
List of relevant instructions, guidelines, policies and processes which detail the exact steps a claim
assessor must take when investigating a claim and making a decision on a claim
Please refer to our response of 21 July 2023 (our ref: GOV-025935). This list includes all policies and
procedures we hold on our internal repository, Process manager. We are in the process of publishing all
our policies; you can view these here
: https://www.acc.co.nz/resources#/category/12.
Please provide me with a single document which details the steps that must be taken, and by whom,
from the moment a claimant lodges a claim with ACC, until the final decision on the claim
There is no single document detailing these steps. Therefore, we are refusing to provide the document
requested as it does not exist. This decision has been made under section 18(e) of the Act.
GOV-027796 Page 1 of 2
As this information may be of interest to other members of the public
ACC may decide to publish a copy of this response on ACC’s website. All requester data, including your
name and contact details, will be removed prior to release. The released response will be made available
www.acc.co.nz/resources/#/category/12. If you have any questions about this response, please get in touch
You can email me at
[email address]. If you are not happy with this response, you can also contact the Ombudsman via
[email address] or by phoning 0800 802 602. Information about how to make a complaint
is available at
www.ombudsman.parliament.nz. Ngā mihi
Sara Freitag
Acting Manager Official Information Act Services
Government Engagement
GOV-027796 Page 2 of 2
Document Outline
