NSW Treasury and the State Insurance Regulatory Authority (SIRA) are to work with icare to speed up the remediation process for underpaid injured workers following the release of an independent review into icare and its empowering Act.
Treasurer Dominic Perrottet said the review, icare and State Insurance and Care Governance Act 2015 Independent Review, was a root and branch examination of icare conducted by retired Supreme Court Judge, Robert McDougall and included issues raised over the past year.
“The Review offers an independent assessment of the issues and challenges facing icare and the worker’s compensation scheme and deals with these fully and frankly,” Mr Perrottet said.
“The Review states icare’s push for change was well-intentioned but was conducted too quickly which led to poor execution and failures in areas including procurement, cost management, probity, and conflict management,” he said.
“The Review also affirms that the structural reforms initiated by the NSW Government in 2015 to improve the NSW workers’ compensation system were and are fundamentally sound.”
Mr Perrottet said the key recommendations from the Review included that icare be bound to a procurement and probity framework equal to that of other Government Agencies; that icare prepare and publish a plan for cultural change; the icare Board include one or more members who possess extensive public sector experience and workers compensation insurance experience; that SIRA develop an accelerated plan for implementation of the findings of its Healthcare Review and release it publicly; and a further independent cultural review be conducted by 2023.
The Treasurer said NSW Treasury and the SIRA would work with icare to speed up the remediation process for injured workers who were underpaid due to historical miscalculation of payments.
He said Deloitte would be engaged to lead the review and provide expert advice on rectifying the historical Pre-injury Average Weekly Earnings (PIAWE) underpayments and overpayments.
Mr Perrottet said rectifying the PIAWE miscalculations had been a priority for icare since it identified and self-reported them to SIRA in February last year, but the complexity of recalculation requirements was hampering progress.
Mr McDougall’s 374-page Review can be accessed at this PS News link.
