Despite ongoing COVID-19 impacts, NSW workers compensation continues to be front page news. NSW Parliamentary Inquiries forced icare, SIRA, EML & the icare Board to participate. icare CEO John Nagle subsequently resigned following revelations his wife was paid $800K over a 3 year period, resulting in Group Executive Don Ferguson has been appointed as interim icare CEO. NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet survived a no confidence motion by a single casting voteMr Perrottet subsequently apologised to workers let down by scandal-ridden insurer icare as he conceded there were serious issues that needed to be addressed inside the agency

icare Inquiry & Investigation – There has been significant media coverage on the icare scheme. Julie has been closely following the parliamentary inquiry regarding the investigation over the icare claims model and scheme management.  As many of you know Julie has been in this industry for over 30 years and the recent revelations have been quite shocking to say the least.  During the enquiry, it was stated that icare didn’t want to engage the employer knowing it may have created adversarial action and would prohibit the claims model.  This makes sense as the new model was created to allow direct contact with workers, claims to be made by workers directly to EML / icare. 

Sometimes employers did not know a worker had made a claim.  I suppose to now highlight the deterioration in Return To Work Rates is mind boggling to me when the exclusion of the employer in the process most certainly would impact the return to work rates!  We have a long road ahead in NSW to recover from these significant issues and what will create long term liabilities will require higher premiums. 

For further information, please refer to the articles below and if you have any questions please contact us.

Source: ABC

Title: icare workers compensation Insider Speaks Out

Read Time: 2 minutes


Source: ABC

Title: The buck stops with me – NSW Treasurer apologises to injured workers let down by icare

Read Time: 2 minutes


Source: SMH

Title: There must be a full scale inquiry into icare – Anything less is a cop out

Read Time: 2 minutes