The Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) pays for the care and recovery of people hurt in accidents. It covers your treatment and some of your lost wages. The aim is to get you back to work and on with your life.

Between 2015 and 2025, ACC had lost its way. Injured people waited too long for help, many became stuck on long-term support, and the future cost of open claims roughly doubled.

So, the government stepped in. It ordered an independent review, demanded a turnaround, appointed a new chair and made ACC report its numbers every month.

And indeed, the numbers have moved. The long-term pool, once swelling by nearly 15 percent a year, stopped growing by April. That is welcome progress.

Yet, what does that headline number actually measure?

To decide whether someone has gone back to work, rather than asking them, ACC simply stops their weekly payments. If, after five weeks, they have not complained, it records them as recovered.

That makes the figures easy to improve. All ACC has to do is decline more claims and suspend more payments. This takes more people off the books and counts each as a recovery, whether they have really recovered or not.

Over the past year, ACC declined cover or support almost 173,000 times and suspended weekly payments 80 percent more often. A record 8,700 left long-term support, yet only 13 in 100 are recorded as returning to their old job, and ACC could not say why about half of them left. It does not track where people end up. Some may have moved into work that suits them. Others may have been pushed off too soon. Nobody knows which.

Some of ACC’s claims tightening was overdue. But a measure that cannot tell genuine recovery from simply moving people off the books cannot, by itself, demonstrate that the crisis is over.

In their analysis, Treasury credited the real gains to an earlier change, when ACC brought back one-to-one case managers who follow through with claimants.

But there is another promising option ACC should utilise more, and that is doing rehabilitation properly.

ACC’s external actuary, the independent expert who estimates its future bills, reckons better recovery could take 500 to 800 million dollars off those costs within two years.

Our new report, Half a Turnaround, makes the case for finishing this job by speeding up rehabilitation and measuring outcomes. Done right, this would not only be welcome news for those who suffered accidents. It would also complete ACC’s financial turnaround.

Explore Oliver's research through our new research note, our NZ Herald column and our latest podcast episode.