Insurance staff handling claims under the NSW WorkCover scheme are very young and have no medical experience, the parliamentary committee inquiring into the scheme has heard.

Medical practitioners and injured workers told the inquiry of high staff turnover among the seven insurers who act as agents of WorkCover, and how red tape frustrates efforts to get treatment and return to work or retrain.

The joint select committee is investigating the scheme’s financial sustainability and performance in promoting better health and return to work after injury.

The 16 recommendations being considered include earlier reduction in benefits, but Australian Medical Association (AMA) NSW VP Michael Gliksman told the committee there might be no need to lessen benefits if administration is improved.

He says young staff with no medical qualifications are making decisions on the cause of injury and treatment without medical input.

The committee heard of doctors’ frustration at having to reapprove, recertify and provide further reports for insurance companies and lawyers.

AMA NSW CEO Fiona Davies says doctors’ greatest complaint was about “the amount of documentation, paperwork, requests for scheme agents where the person responsible for the claim changes constantly, where they are then required to provide all of the information again or where claims are unexpectedly stopped or not continued when a patient is actually on their journey”.

Slater & Gordon Practice Group Leader Rosana May says “some very unskilled and very young claims-handlers” have little life experience. She alleged they treat workers “as if they are not worthy of receiving benefits”.

Members of a support group for injured workers say employers and agents have treated them as if they are fraudulent, and that young claims staff have the power to make decisions that significantly change people’s lives.

Slater & Gordon has 30 lawyers in NSW handling workers’ compensation claims. GM Hayden Stephens says the WorkCover scheme’s management should be reviewed before benefits are cut.

“There is strong evidence that the causes of WorkCover’s problems are related to the cost of the delivery of the benefits, not the cost of the benefits themselves,” he said.

He says benefits have fallen in real terms by more than 20% from 2002 to 2010 and major injuries have halved since 1996, while payments to insurers have gone from $200 million in 2002 to $475 million in 2010.

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