Workers Compensation- WIRO the Watchdog is beheaded 11/12/19.

In the sad saga of treating NSW Workers Comp patients it is hard to know where a bad deal becomes a rip off becomes a scam becomes systemic fraud, but the NSW insurance scheme is a long way down the track.  Much worse than the Banks.

The Hayne Royal Commission did not get to the issue and the Minister seems only concerned with lowering the premiums.

SIRA (State Insurance Regulatory Agency) is completely captured by insurer interests, and principally serves to pretend that there is a regulator.

The legal system is partly excluded by the legislation and is so cumbersome that it cannot be used in real time.

The answer was to have doctors arbitrate treatment decisions. When insurance-paid doctors find nothing wrong with the patient or that what is wrong was there before the accident patients go to an appeal doctor.  But the insurers have input to the selection of these also, so the group that initiate the treatment disputes increasingly arbitrate them!

The only bright hope in all of this was WIRO (Workers Compensation Independent Review Office), run on a shoestring by Kim Garling, a lawyer, which usually gave injured people the treatments or payments that they were entitled to.  He was not popular with insurers, but some of us hoped that he would be given jurisdiction over CTP matters also.

Now Garling has been sacked at no notice.  Clearly the NSW government is totally in the pockets of the insurers.  God help my patients!

www.smh.com.au/business/workplace/workers-compensation-watchdog-to-be-replaced-20191210-p53io7.html