Following an August directive from the State Insurance Regulatory Authority (SIRA) to review payments relating to Workers Compensation Commission (WCC) or Personal Injury Commission (PIC) decisions from October 2012 onwards, icare has identified about 9,400 workers' compensation claims that may have been underpaid because inflation adjustments were not included.
According to icare, the review focuses on a specific cohort of claims that form part of icare's existing historical indexation remediation program. That is the cohort of tens of thousands of claims identified in 2022 where indexation for statutory entitlements was not applied correctly, resulting in underpayment of statutory entitlements of up to $40 million.
This 2022 underpayment scandal followed a similar underpayment issue identified in 2021, where workers' Pre-Injury Average Weekly Earnings (PIAWE) had not been properly calculated, resulting in underpayment and a need for backpayment.
As stated by Greens NSW MP, Abigail Boyd, Chair of the Public Accountability and Works Committee, and Greens NSW spokesperson for Work Health and Safety:
"This is yet more damning news for icare and the insurance companies they've outsourced to manage claims and administer statutory benefits for injured workers.
"It's devastating news for these injured workers who continue to be denied their proper entitlements because of the sloppy handling of their claims. Time after time, I'm hearing from injured workers of the errors being made by these insurers, and the amount of time it takes, and the stress people endure, just to correct basic errors and obvious maladministration in the system.
"What's most shameful is that this cohort of workers have already had to go through a legal challenge to get their proper entitlements, and to now not even have the decisions handed down by the commissioner being complied with properly adds insult to further injury.
"For these underpayment issues to emerge almost like clockwork every 12 to 18 months speaks volumes to the level of care afforded to injured workers in this state. It's wage theft, plain and simple - but once again it's injured workers who pay the price.
"Icare has spent millions of dollars over the past few years on consultants to address persistent underpayments and indexation issues, and to assess their so-called 'improvement program'. What's evident is that precisely nothing has improved.
"Meanwhile, the government is trying to force through cruel and dangerous cuts to workers compensation entitlements, and ironically making changes once again to how indexation gets applied to weekly benefits. I think this government and icare need to concentrate on getting their own house in order before even thinking about coming for some of our States most vulnerable people.
"I've personally identified numerous simple mathematical errors in icare's public reporting, and have pointed out the frankly heroic assumptions on which the government's proposed cuts are supposedly based on. After this latest debacle, how could any reasonable person have any confidence in any numbers coming out of icare or the government when it comes to workers compensation?"
