A former Canberra public servant had nearly 1300 physiotherapy sessions at a cost to taxpayers of more than $70,000 before the workers' compensation agency called a halt.
The former National Library worker, who had been getting the treatment since the 1990s, has lost a legal bid to force the federal government to continue paying for her regular physio sessions.
The case is part of a broader crackdown by federal workplace insurer Comcare on expensive treatments for public servants injured on the jobs that can sometimes can go on for decades without getting the injured worker back to their desks.
Louise Oliver developed a pain disorder in her arms while working as an assistant library officer in the Canberra institution in the late 1980s.
Comcare began paying for physio sessions to manage the "intractable" condition in 1992, and continued to support the treatment after Ms Oliver was certified as permanently unfit to work and made redundant in late 2000.
By October 2014, the workers' comp agency had paid for 1291 sessions and had decided earlier that year that the physio should cease by January 2015 with Ms Oliver moving towards "self management" of her condition.
Ms Oliver challenged Comcare's decision in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, asking the AAT to instruct that Comcare pay for 75 physio sessions followed by a tapering treatment regime of physiotherapy, a cognitive behaviour therapy course, a Pilates course and a pain management course.
The tribunal heard medical evidence that the physio would not resolve the pain Ms Oliver continued to suffer from her occupational over-use injuries but the treatments allowed the former public servant to live a normal life.
Three medical experts expressed concern that Ms Oliver's treatment had continued over decades, involving nearly 1300 sessions, without any overall improvement and created a dependency on the physio, which one of the doctors described as "effectively a deep massage with some therapeutic relaxation and reduction in muscular irritability."
The expert, Dr Phillip Vecchio, also said Ms Oliver's treatment had no end point or focus and simply created a dependency on the regular sessions.
In his decision, Tribunal Deputy President Gary Humphries backed Comcare's decision.
"A sustained but open-ended programme of physiotherapy over nearly 30 years has made Ms Oliver dependent on it and discouraged the exploration of less costly alternatives, particularly self-managed ones," Mr Humphries wrote.
"I find that physiotherapy does provide her with short-lived quality of life benefits, but that those benefits are at least partly offset by...the counter-productive effect of leading the applicant to a dependent state."
In recent years Comcare has fought many legal battles against the continued provision of therapies and other benefits where the agency questioned their usefulness.
In January, the AAT backed Comcare's decision to stop paying for running shoes, after 20 years, for a public servant who twisted his knee at work in the early 1990s.
In September 2016, a former public servant lost his regular taxpayer-funded massages on his bad back, but not before hundreds of sessions had been paid for at a cost to the Commonwealth of more than $50,000.
0 comments
New User? Sign up