Insurance Commissioner Neil Singleton was recently a guest speaker at the Recover Forum 2016.
With the theme ‘Fostering recovery following debilitating injury’, the educational event featured a series of presentations from world-renowned researchers who shared the findings of their recent research which aims to increase our understanding of the factors that promote or hinder recovery following debilitating injury.
As part of the forum, Neil spoke on successful recovery from injury in a CTP claim context, in which he discussed one of the key focuses of the Queensland CTP scheme – supporting early intervention and rehabilitation to aid recovery from the effects of injury following road trauma.
A brief synopsis of Neil’s presentation is below.
The CTP scheme is a common law fault based scheme. Historically it has focused on the number and cost of claims to determine the premiums required to be collected by insurers.
We receive around 6,500 claims each year of which around 70-80 per cent are for minor severity injuries and we have an actuarial assessment of the likely cost of those claims. We have also seen a small but steady decline in the duration of claims (the time taken from lodgement to finalisation). All in all a success story – but with a few pieces of the story remain missing.
Whether an injured person makes a recovery from injury is not a factor the scheme concerns itself with – it merely seeks to financially compensate for any shortfall. What happens to the injured person post-settlement is unknown. The duration of claims is still significant – around four years across all claims with even minor whiplash claims requiring 12-18 months to resolve. The opportunity to do more and do better remains open.
Whether this is through continually improving the evidence base for treatment providers and treatment planning; finding ways to educate and encourage behaviour change by clinicians in their treatment methods; or through exploring ways to improve the claim process, are all factors open for debate.
It’s a debate MAIC is keen to encourage and questions MAIC are keen to see answered and addressed.