The Department of Health wants to charge construction companies for treating injured workers. Do you think this is right? You’ve got until 17 December to let government know.

If the regulations come into effect, the NHS will be able to recover costs from insurance companies for treating patients in all cases where personal injury compensation is paid.

The NHS already recovers £105m per year for treating people injured in road accidents if they win compensation. By expanding the Injury Cost Recovery scheme to include construction, with its high rate of reportable injuries, the NHS hopes to recoup a total of £250m per year. This is enough to hire 11,000 newly-qualified nurses.

But the Construction Confederation voiced reservations. Its heath and safety director Andy Sneddon said it would be fine if money collected went to preventing occupational ill health, but not if the cash simply disappeared into some institutional black hole.

“Otherwise it looks like a tax on accidents, creating a revenue stream out of people’s misfortunes,” Sneddon said.

But health minister Rosie Winterton insited it was only fair.“It is unnacceptable that taxpayers have to pay for the medical treatment of someone injured at work simply because employers fail to take adequate steps to protect their workforce,” she said.

“Individual hospitals will now be able to recover the costs and decide where they want to reinvest that money to improve services they want,” Winterton added. To download the consultation document visit www.dh.gov.uk/consultations and look under Live Consultations.

Source

Construction Manager