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Work injury leads to compensation nightmare for Mangawhai family

 

 

thumbnail 12 MF-DaleACC1 copy-165JULIA WADE

Getting swiped by large machinery while at work and suffering the aftermath of months in pain, sounds like a text-book case of ensuring government financial and medical support.

However, for one local, the path to healing after such an incident has instead been laden with misdiagnosis, misleading medical information, unemployment, anxiety, and having to take legal advice after an Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) decision resulted in the injured man being covered for treatment he does not need, and not covered for care he desperately requires.

Former MDL Civil survey assistant, Dale Austin, had only been four weeks in his new role at Mangawhai Central (MC) before being hit on his shoulder and back by an 8-ton digger, leaving the 38-year-old in constant pain, affecting his ability to sleep, sit and generally be comfortable. He says he is also concerned about the damage occurring in his body while waiting for a resolution to his ACC case.

“Currently my lawyer has applied for my surgeon to see ACC’s medical notes which their clinical advisors based their decision to decline my application for treatment and compensation, saying my injuries are degenerative, even though I haven’t actually been seen by an ACC specialist…”

 

Medical drama
Dale was the sole-provider for his family of five when the incident occurred, and now along with wife Shaz and their three children aged 11, 7 and 2, has had to make ends meet for the last nine months on WINZ payments and food donations, as well as being forced to move to a lower-rental home.

“He’s been in this pain for so long, it’s hard for everyone,” Shaz says. “The kids have kind-of lost their Dad as they don’t get to do what he used to, run around and play… it’s quite heart breaking.”

Dale’s medical drama stretches back to when the family lived in Auckland, when on May 2014, as part of his property maintenance business, he injured his lower back while carrying bags of cement and heavy posts.

Experiencing a lot of pain while moving, sitting and bending over, Dale was diagnosed with a fractured vertebrae and disc prolapse, and underwent reconstructive surgery by a specialist at Ascot Mercy Hospital, before a slow recovery and return to work.

“As expected, every now and then I get back pain but it wouldn’t last very long and I was able to still work with medication.”

 

Move to Mangawhai
The family moved to Mangawhai four years ago in search of ‘a better life’, and after realising how much he was missing time with his children during the April 2020 Covid lockdown, Dale swapped his job as an installation/support technician for construction machinery – which took him all over the North Island – for something more local.

During the second August Covid-19 wave, the former safety and health representative began work as a survey assistant with construction firm MDL Civil, a role which required him to be ‘constantly on my feet, walking the huge Mangawhai Central construction site all day, every day’.

“I started to get sore legs and pains in my lower back, as my body was not used to walking so much; in my previous job I was sitting a lot,” he says. “It did not prevent me from working though, I took precautions by using a back brace to help take care of myself.”

 

thumbnail Mang central works-296Struck by digger
Only a few weeks into his new role, Dale was accidently struck by the digger.

“The hitch, which connects to the bucket, hit me on my left shoulder and down my back, shunting me forward enough that I had to step over a ditch that was being dug,” he says. “At the time I was working with the site supervisor, we were waiting in a safe area for the digger to finish and watched it track away before moving into the area to check some survey points, but the digger then tracked back and didn’t see us.”

Although feeling ‘a little bit sore in my left shoulder and lower back’ in the afternoon, the next day the pain had spread down Dale’s legs, becoming so intense that by late morning he was struggling to stand upright at work, ‘was using the survey pole to help brace myself, had very bad pains through my legs, buttocks and lower back’.

In the following two days, Dale was examined by two doctors, the first in Wellsford after driving himself ‘in absolute agony’, enduring a Covid test, and being prescribed painkillers, then again in Mangawhai ‘after waking up in agony’.

“My own doctor could clearly see that I was in a lot of pain, booked me off work for four weeks and referred me to my previous specialist.”

A few weeks later, an MRI scan showed ‘a bit of wear and tear in the disks’ which did not explain Dale’s level of pain and the specialist recommended a course of physiotherapy. However, due to his back muscles ‘constantly spasming’ the treatment was unsuccessful, ‘sometimes it left me worse than I was before the appointment’.

Unable to walk
“At the end of December 2020, I was putting our baby down to sleep and as I slowly twisted my body to lay her on the bed, I felt something in my back snap, and I instantly dropped to the ground in excruciating pain,” he says. “I was unable to walk, and dragged myself to a bedroom window to call my kids and they helped me to the couch where I called an ambulance.”

After X-rays in Whangarei Hospital were unable to reveal the reason for Dale’s collapse, he was discharged and referred to an orthopaedic specialist. To establish the cause of Dale’s suffering, the surgeon conducted a series of spinal steroid injections in two sections which showed ‘lumbar disc prolapse’ (disc thinning), and into his sacroiliac joint (S.I joint).

“The injections to the disc made no difference to my movement or pain, but with the S.I joint injections, my movement was significantly better and the pain almost completely gone. A week later when the cortisone wore off, the pain returned,” he says. “It’s clear that the problem is from the damage to the S.I joints which is not a degenerative issue but caused by trauma, like a fall or impact, which is why the specialist believes that being hit by the digger has caused this issue… along with the fact that since then I was struggling to even sit, stand or walk without being in complete agony and having to take tramadol to take the edge off.”

 

Work and ACC issues
Since the September incident, Dale has not been able to work and after ACC informed him in October that his work compensation for 12 weeks – based on the digger incident – had been approved, handed in his resignation with MDL.

“After I sent the medical certificate to MDL’s general manager, he said that they could not wait for me as they needed to employ another surveyor which they couldn’t do until I had resigned, and that they will accept my resignation. I informed him that I would not resign until I had received confirmation of my work compensation from ACC.”

In reply, an MDL spokesperson appears to contest this saying that after Dale’s resignation, the role of survey assistant was actually not filled ‘until a few weeks ago’.

When no payments had been received after a week, Dale called ACC only to be told ‘that they had made a mistake and could not pay compensation as they needed to investigate more’.

“I contacted an employment lawyer who said as I was still on a 90-day work trial period, I didn’t have a leg to stand on regarding keeping my job… so I’ve been left with nothing.”

Dale has multiple ACC claim numbers, resulting from December’s incident, September’s digger hit and the historic 2014 claim. Once he filed for a review hearing regarding the retraction of compensation, ACC froze all the claims except December, effectively cutting him off from treatment in relation to the digger injury, as the doctor in Whangarei Hospital who recorded the December claim diagnosed Dale with a ‘lumbar disc prolapse’, which ACC approved.

 

Injury diagnosis confusion
However, when the orthopaedic surgeon contacted ACC with his assessment and payment request for surgery via the December claim, stating ‘being hit by a rotating digger is in more in keeping with the resulting symptoms’ and recommended a ‘bilateral sacroiliac fusion’, the claim was turned down.

ACC stated ’this condition wasn’t caused by your accident in December, and relates to an unrelated health condition. This means we are unable to cover this condition or other support for this injury…. You are still covered for your original injury ‘lumbar disc prolapse’.

“However, the orthopaedic surgeon says it was not a prolapse… has been telling ACC that the hit I received from the digger was the cause and convinced the S.I joints is where the issue is… but they keep saying its degenerative from my 2014 surgery.”

Other factors have also not helped Dale’s case including doctors allegedly not accurately recording the digger incident, and ‘MDL denying the incident actually happened that day’ even though Dale says he filed an incident report. An MDL spokesperson however refutes the company denied that the incident took place, stating they ‘have worked with the relevant parties to provide any information required’. WorkSafe have also been involved.

 

Family health scares
On top of Dale’s concerns, both Shaz and the couple’s 11-year-old son have had health scares. In February this year Dylan was admitted to hospital with inflammation and fluid around his hips and chest which left him unable to walk for nearly four weeks and in recent weeks has been given a tentative diagnose of ‘juvenile arthritis’. In the past month, Shaz has been told she may have Lupis, an autoimmune disease which is potentially life-threatening; ‘feels like just one thing after another’.

However, the Austin’s say they are humbled by the outpouring of support from the community, with friends setting up a Givealittle page for Dylan and Mangawhai Beach School holding a mufti-day fundraiser recently, which paid for his medical treatment, Shaz says.

“We’ve also had friends bringing in meals and both Te Whai Trust and CauseWay Church have been very good to us, dropping off food baskets, groceries, even babysitters and checking in with our mental health,” she says. “Support from the community has been really amazing, we’re very grateful.”

The couple have also been attending Te Whai Community Trust’s ‘Wellbeing Group’ to keep a check on their mental health.

“It’s a lot of mental stress with finances and constantly battling ACC all the time, and frustrating things like them asking us for information I know they already have because they’ve sent it to us – also feel very disappointed with some people in the medical field,” Dale says. “The whole experience has been very frustrating, a nightmare… all I want is to be able to get well while knowing my family are being looked after.”

UPDATE: ACC have been contacted by the Mangawhai Focus for a response regarding Dale’s experience, and while they have replied, a detailed reply was not available before going to print.

Also, just before going to print, some hope for Dale after an ACC review specialist made contact stating after he has reviewed the case details, finds ‘there is no convincing medical reasoning to support how the evidence shows degenerative pathology as opposed to the already accepted acute pathology’, and ‘as a result revocation is inappropriate… ACC has liability to treat the covered personal injury, the disc protrusion… further entitlements should also be considered’.

 


After posting his ACC struggles on local social media, Dale Austin realised his experience, especially with claims denied due to injuries being classed as ‘degenerative’, is a story familiar to many, and decided to go more public to highlight the difficulties.

PHOTO/JULIA WADE

 

“The whole experience has been very frustrating, a nightmare… all I want is to be able to get well while knowing my family are being looked after.”

- Dale Austin

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