Louise Carroll: ACC's broken promises a blow to the hearing impaired

Louise Carroll is chief executive of the National Foundation for the Deaf. Photo / Supplied

ACC chairman John Judge recently defended the $2.2 billion surplus the corporation achieved last year.

ACC has introduced two major changes to how it treats hearing that is damaged at work - part-charges for rehabilitation and a 6 per cent threshold before claims will be considered.

Both changes are a contrivance. Both will have a major impact on people with noise-damaged hearing and deny many of them the rehabilitation that is central to ACC's work.

The plan for part-charges is based on the argument that in providing rehabilitation ACC is also paying to fix non-injury conditions, such as age-related hearing loss.

This is a fiction.

Last year, ACC received 11,509 claims for hearing injury that occurred at work - occupational noise-induced hearing loss. It provided rehabilitation funding for just 4844 of them.

After a rigorous, some would say callous, assessment process, ACC accepted these cases were genuine work-related injuries and agreed to fund rehabilitation - hearing aids and audiology services.

If that injury rehabilitation has a collateral benefit to other conditions the client has that benefit comes at no extra cost to ACC.

However, under its new regulations, ACC will tell successful claimants that if they also have other conditions, such as age-related hearing loss, then ACC will pay only the portion of the total cost that equals the injury.

If ACC decides 40 per cent of the hearing loss is noise damage then ACC will pay only 40 per cent of the rehabilitation.

If the injured person cannot afford the potential thousands of dollars for the remaining 60 per cent of rehabilitation they will go without - and you can't hear with half a hearing aid.

The 6 per cent threshold, on the other hand, is a distortion of the reality.

People hear across a range of frequencies, from low tones through to high tones. Hearing professionals assign a value, called the NAL scale, to each of the frequencies with a greater weighting given to low tones.

Noise damage attacks the high frequencies of our hearing - the frequencies we use for understanding human speech, especially softer sounds, and especially in everyday background noise.

Because of the NAL scale weighting values it takes substantial damage in those frequencies to achieve a 6 per cent total hearing loss, and a loss in these tones can have a severe impact on a person's ability to function in work and social environments.

The threshold also means medical professionals can no longer judge each case on its merits.

The main victims of both these changes are the elderly. ACC's figures show the average age of claimants is 69. These are the people who worked through the 1970s and 80s when noise was an accepted part of many jobs and hearing protection was a rarity.

These are the people who are now living on limited discretionary incomes who will be more likely to go without hearing aids because they can't afford "their share".

But these are also the people who gave up the right to sue for damages when ACC was introduced, and whose employers paid years of levies so their workers would be covered for injury. To now deny those people cover is an injustice. To ask them to pay a portion of their rehabilitation based on their age is wrong.

Scientists state there is no reliable test to separate hearing damage and age-related hearing loss. Their research also suggests that noise damage can accelerate age-related hearing loss.

Setting aside the argument that ACC's deficit is produced by the change in the funding model, in making these changes ACC is jumping the gun.

ACC's projections of future noise-injury claims are based on previous figures but ACC is funding research by Auckland and Massey Universities into noise injury in the New Zealand workplace, and preliminary results suggest the current level of claims is a bubble. The figures being quoted are also out of line.

ACC Minister Nick Smith has quoted costs of $80 million for rehabilitating occupational noise-induced hearing loss. But ACC confirmed that is a projection for 2014. ACC's claim figures for next year are also down on those for last year.

It is bizarre that ACC is funding research into the state of noise injury in New Zealand but making fundamental decisions about access to rehabilitation without waiting for the results.

ACC chairman John Judge stated in his July 8 Herald article that "ACC's basic promise to all New Zealanders is that ACC will look after those who are injured" and lauded ACC's record in rehabilitation.

The reality for those facing part-charges is they will get their rehabilitation if they can afford to pay their "share".

The reality for those who are rejected by ACC and whose injury does not get them across an artificial threshold is they will have to turn to a public health system that is struggling to cope - or do without.

For those people, ACC is breaking its promise.

* Louise Carroll is chief executive of the National Foundation for the Deaf.