While New Zealand’s Accident Compensation Scheme provides comprehensive no-fault injury compensation, there is evidence for disparities in access: some groups of people are less likely to lodge a claim for compensation when they’re injured. Measuring this disparity is challenging due to a dearth of data and the many factors that influence claim rates.
I provided advice on how to measure equity of access followed by analysis of IDI-based data to demonstrate the recommended approach. This is supporting ACC to take action to reduce disparities and meet its legislated equity reporting requirements.
Year: 2023
For ACC, with contributions from Dr Michele Morris.
This work involved:
- searching for existing New Zealand injury data and assessing its usefulness for the project
- gathering expert advice on ways of measuring equity of access to ACC support
- linking data in the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) from ACC, the Census, the General Social Survey (GSS), health, education, housing and corrections
- analysis of ACC claim rates among injured people using linked GSS and ACC data
- time series and multiple regression analysis using large linked datasets for the whole New Zealand population
- using SQL and R to extract, clean, and analyse IDI-based data
- interpreting findings and providing reports and recommendations to ACC
- close collaboration with ACC staff to ensure that the analysis met their needs and to help them translate findings and recommendations into action
- detailed documentation of processes so the analysis can be replicated in future.