Specific changes for providers

So injured birthing parents can access ACC-funded treatment, care and rehabilitation as early as possible, we’ve expanded the types of health professionals who can lodge claims and also opened up access to traditional and holistic healing through rongoā Māori.

Physiotherapists

Physiotherapists who want to provide maternal birth injury services under our Allied Health contract need to show they have an ongoing interest in pelvic health.

Those already signed up to this contract need to supply some extra information for us:

evidence of membership to Physiotherapy New Zealand’s Pelvic Women’s and Men’s Health special interest group
Vendor ID
an ACC Provider ID number. To receive a Provider ID, physiotherapists need to be registered to deliver services.

This request and relevant documents should be emailed to us.

Email health.procurement@acc.co.nz

Physiotherapists working under the Cost of Treatment Regulations can provide treatment as they normally do for patients with a covered claim.

Midwives

For the first time, midwives will be able to lodge claims within their scope of practice for the women and birthing parents in their care who experience a maternal birth injury.

Empowering midwives to lodge claims recognises their professional and clinical expertise, the close bond they form with women and birthing parents and their whānau and their involvement during the critical time of birth.

The scope of practice for midwives means they can lodge claims for labial, vaginal, vulval, clitoral, cervical, rectal, and perineal tears. Not every maternal birth injury will require an ACC claim.

Midwives should consider lodging a claim if they or the injured woman or birthing parent believe they’ll benefit from further support to help them recover. For example, it’s unlikely a claim will be needed for a first- or second-degree tear if it’s expected to heal without complications and within the expected timeframe.

If a midwife suspects the woman or birthing parent in their care has experienced an injury outside of this scope of practice, they should refer them to a general practitioner, nurse practitioner or other specialist to lodge a claim on their behalf.

How to lodge a claim

Midwives working in a hospital or birthing centre should talk with your facility about their claim lodgement process and what role you will play in this. Hospitals have existing processes in place for lodging ACC claims.

Those working in the community or facility which doesn’t have an existing process for lodging claims will need to register with us before lodging a claim.

Registering can be done in a few simple steps and means we can process claims through our systems.

Midwives will continue to be funded by Te Whatu Ora (Health New Zealand) as they are now. ACC will not provide additional funding instead of, or in addition to, the funding provided through Te Whatu Ora.

This is consistent with our approach for other healthcare providers who are not named as ‘Treatment Providers’ in the Accident Compensation legislation and are therefore unable to be paid by ACC for treatment provision.

Learn more about lodging maternal birth injury claims

Ordering ACC45 forms

For now, midwives lodging claims outside of a hospital setting will need to fill out a paper version of the ACC45. Once you're registered with us, these can be ordered for free through the ECOS webstore.

How to order forms through ECOS

open

To activate your account, email the following details to TrueNorth, our provider who runs the ECOS web store:

name
provider number
profession
phone number
physical address for delivery.

Email truenorth.help@truenorthsps.com

To make this process faster, some registration details will be passed on to TrueNorth so they’re prepared for activation requests.

Once confirmed, you can order the resources. Orders placed before 1:00pm will be dispatched on the same day. Orders placed after this will be sent the following day.

Guide to online ordering from ECOS

Rongoā Māori practitioners

We’ve created a new contracted service for rongoā Māori practitioners delivering traditional healing and rehabilitation for kiritaki (clients) with a covered injury and their whānau.

This includes:

whakawhanaungatanga (building connections and relationships)
whitiwhiti kōrero (support and advice)
wānanga (group sessions)
mirimiri and romiromi (bodywork)
hōmiri (sound healing)

This contract is an acknowledgement of the role and place of rongoā Māori as a holistic way of care and healing and builds on services which our existing ACC-registered practitioners deliver as part of our social rehabilitation offerings.

Practitioners can continue to work with their kiritaki (clients) as they currently do, ie a maximum of four sessions without prior approval. They don’t need to sign up to this contract to provide services for those with a covered maternal birth injury from 1 October 2022.