Get your act together, frustrated client urges ACC

Lorraine Jamieson has first-hand experience of Accident Compensation Corporation blunders.

She's been sent private information about another claimant, a list of 47 doctors detailing "confidential" phone numbers, and has had a file go "missing" for months.

And the Tauranga 66-year-old is not alone.

In the first three months of this year, personal ACC file details were sent to the wrong people six times. A warning letter was issued to staff and new privacy training introduced.

But Mrs Jamieson says that's not good enough.

She says ACC needs to make more effort to follow up "genuine leads" about errors.

Mrs Jamieson is locked in a legal battle with the corporation over another matter. It was while pursuing this case that her file went missing and she was sent wrong information.

The former farm worker suffered a back injury after lifting a heavy plant tub in 1993 - leaving her left leg and bowel permanently impaired.

In October 2003 she requested some of her own details but by November 11 the details had not arrived. She asked ACC to contact all recipients of couriered documents during that period. All 200 were notified but only 11 responded.

Yet one response was from Dispute Resolution Services in Palmerston North, saying they had the file. Mrs Jamieson says she drew ACC's attention to this and nothing was done.

ACC media adviser Fraser Folster says a "comprehensive and exhaustive" search of the Hamilton Service Centre was carried out and an apology issued.

Mrs Jamieson was eventually issued another copy of the original file.

But Mrs Jamieson hates the thought of a stranger reading years of personal and confidential details.

The doctors' list arrived attached to correspondence in December 2003. It gave contact details for 47 doctors, some labelled "confidential number". Mrs Jamieson held on to the list for safekeeping and did not inform ACC.

Mr Folster says she should return the list to its sender.

He says ACC knew nothing about the doctors' list and suggested it could be a list freely available to the public.

Mrs Jamieson requested some other documents in 1999, which arrived with another person's file information attached.

She says she contacted the Tauranga branch of ACC within weeks, to inform them of the error.

"They just really dismissed it and didn't do anything," she said.

But ACC insists Mrs Jamieson did not contact them until three years later. She says she brought it up for the second time three years later while pursuing another matter.

- NZPA