The State Government has published its updated workers’ compensation Impairment Assessment Guidelines, which incorporate community feedback on several key issues.
Treasurer, Rob Lucas said the Return to Work Scheme Impairment Assessment Guidelines had not been updated since 2015 and required changes to reflect clinical developments and improve efficiency, fairness and transparency.
He said the Guidelines are used by medical assessors to determine the Whole Person Impairment (WPI) percentage of injured workers.
Mr Lucas said the WPI rating determined the amount of compensation an injured worker may receive.
He said the Return to Work Act 2014 required the Treasurer (as responsible Minister), rather than Parliament, to publish the Guidelines.
He said that following community feedback, the updated Guidelines included ensuring there was no set deduction in benefits for pre-existing injury and protecting workers’ choice of assessor.
Mr Lucas said he had determined not to pursue changes proposed by ReturnToWorkSA (RTWSA) which for asymptomatic and pre-existing impairments would have resulted in a compulsory 1/10th deduction from a worker’s WPI rating.
The Treasurer said another proposed change, which would have meant only surgeons could act as an assessor following surgeries rather than other specialists such as Occupational Physicians, had also been rejected.
Mr Lucas said the updated Guidelines did not raise the five per cent threshold or the 30 per cent seriously injured person threshold, which were set in the Return to Work Act 2014 and cannot be undone.
The 151-page updated Guidelines can be accessed in the South Australian Government Gazette at this PS News link.
