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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-05-13 Daily Xml
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WORKCOVER CORPORATION

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (15:06): I seek leave to make an explanation before asking the Leader of the Government a question about WorkCover.

Leave granted.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: In September last year, the Auditor-General wrote to WorkCover expressing concern about a range of issues, in particular, the validity of invoices from medical service providers. In that letter, the Auditor-General said:

When authorising payments, the case managers are expected to check the validity of medical procedures shown on invoices based on their knowledge of the worker's injuries. However, the case managers have no assurance that every procedure shown on the invoices were performed and whether the most appropriate gazette codes were selected by providers.

Further, the Auditor-General said:

The Corporation was unable to provide us with the number and value of services that were not validated to enable us to quantify the materiality of this control deficiency.

The Auditor-General noted that there was approximately $114 million worth of invoices from medical service providers just in the financial 2008-09. The Auditor-General further noted that a limited survey had been conducted by the corporation but that the Auditor-General noted that, whilst these surveys identified no fraudulent billing, they did not provide a high level assurance as they did not cover all providers of medical services and covered only those workers who volunteered to participate in the surveys.

The Auditor-General went on to highlight the risks of this management practice of WorkCover, as follows:

Payments may be made for medical procedures that have not been performed. Gazette codes wrongly selected by medical service providers may remain undetected. This causes under or overpayments. Under or overpayment of medical service providers causes inaccurate medical expense and inaccurate actuarial estimates of the value of outstanding claims in internal and external financial reports.

The Auditor-General then went on to suggest a range of actions that the Auditor-General believed WorkCover should undertake.

I think it was two days later that Julia Davison, on behalf of WorkCover, wrote back to the Auditor-General and basically said that she and WorkCover proposed to take no action in relation to the Auditor's concerns on these issues. My questions are:

1. Given that this was raised now nine months ago and that he has been minister for a short period of time, does the minister support the actions of the WorkCover Board and its management in rejecting the concerns expressed by the Auditor-General on this important issue and resolving to take no action?

2. If the minister does not agree with the WorkCover position, what action does he propose to take in relation to taking up the Auditor-General's concerns?

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY (Minister for Mineral Resources Development, Minister for Urban Development and Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister Assisting the Premier in Public Sector Management) (15:09): I know that the Hon. Mr Lucas was a member of the Statutory Authorities Review Committee (SARC) when that committee had the Chief Executive of WorkCover and the chair appeared before the committee as many as four or five times, so the honourable member has probably had more meetings with them over the years than I have. I know that the subject of WorkCover was before Statutory Authorities Review Committee for at least 12 months or so—

The Hon. Carmel Zollo: More than 12 months.

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY: More than 12 months. I thank the honourable member for that. So, the honourable member certainly had plenty of time to raise that matter. In relation to the Auditor-General's recommendations, my general view is that they deserve to be treated seriously by any organisation. However, I am not going to comment on matters that happened nine months ago without going back to check the record. I am sure that the Hon. Mr Lucas, through his committee, will have plenty of opportunity to raise questions if they go that far back. I will take the question on notice and see what information I can provide.

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