July communiqué

The SIRA Board held its regular monthly meeting on Thursday 23 July 2020 via Skype.

The SIRA Board had a valuable discussion with the Secretary of the Department of Customer Service (DCS), Ms Em Hogan, about the draft DCS strategy and the opportunities for SIRA to work on shared priorities with others in the Customer Service Cluster.

The SIRA Board were updated on the upcoming public hearings of the Law and Justice Committee 2020 Review of the Workers Compensation Scheme.

Dr Abby Bloom, Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee (ARC) provided an update on the July ARC Meeting which considered the draft SIRA Financial Statements as at 30 June 2020 and the cyber risk security management arrangements within DCS and SIRA.

Board members were pleased to receive a report on SIRA’s Healthcare Review which will move the personal injury schemes regulated by SIRA towards a value-based healthcare approach.

The SIRA Board approved consultation, for a period of 6 weeks, on the revised ‘Workers compensation guidelines for allied health treatment and hearing service provision’.  The revised guidelines will strengthen SIRA’s ability to respond to non-compliant providers, set a three-year term of approval to ensure ongoing service delivery is consistent with the objectives of the national schemes.

In relation to the performance of the workers compensation Nominal Insurer managed by icare, the Board received a further update on the 21-point Action Plan and was briefed on the development of a small range of KPI’s for joint monthly monitoring by the icare and SIRA boards.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the SIRA Board received an update on how SIRA is continually adapting services and policy especially focussing on:

• delivery of the new three-tiered Recovery Advisory Service to help small businesses re-open and recover post-COVID;
• finalising extensive consultation on PIAWE options for calculation of JobKeeper payments; and
• convening a working group to adapt the NSW Mentally Healthy Workplaces Strategy to COVID-19, particularly with a focus on supporting business and workers in the recovery phase.

In addition, the Board received a CTP Scheme Performance and Monitoring update and was interested to discuss a “Deep Dive” analysis of instances where an injured person has claims in both the CTP and Workers Compensation schemes.

Trevor Matthews

SIRA Board Chair