Where old cases with open liability have lain inactive (i.e. without the employee requesting a benefit) for some considerable time – perhaps for decades – employees sometimes forget that RCG has already accepted their claim. Such clients may submit a new claim form when finally they come to request a financial benefit or service from RCG. This is another reason why all compensation claim forms should prompt a check for previous applications.
Where the preliminary search of file records in respect to a new claim form shows that a file already exists for that injury, Delegates should not progress the duplicate application but should recover the old file from archives and provide service to the employee on that file.
Recovery and use of an old file is very important, no matter how old it is. The old file may contain papers vital to the correct handling of the present matter. For instance the old papers may contain specialist medical reports contemporary with acceptance of liability, records of previous lump sums paid, records of 'cease effects' determinations or 'redemptions' of entitlements. All such issues would have a profound effect on the manner in which the claim is now to be handled.
In some cases, the employee may be very confident of their previous dealings with RCG and may even be able to produce copies of earlier correspondence. Even so, in some of these oldest cases, the identification and recovery of the original files may involve some difficulty. All since 1949. Defcare commenced operation in August 1998, when it absorbed data from a number of older stand-alone electronic systems from around Australia. The age of data transferred from those legacy systems varied widely but few of those old computer records were older than 1993. Thus, records of the oldest files still reside on Department of Defence card indexes and other manual systems. These manual systems have never been (and probably never will be) consolidated by Defence into a central index. Furthermore, Defence's former registry procedures varied widely from state to state and storage of the files themselves has never been consolidated, i.e. some old files are stored in Commonwealth Archives and some in Defence repositories. Given the highly mobile nature of service in the ADF, a claim may have been registered in any State in which the claimant served or resided since discharge, and an old claim file could be located in the holdings of almost any of the Defence Locations.
On receipt of a claim relating to a pre-1993 injury, RCG locations should:
Links
[1] https://clik.dva.gov.au/user/login?destination=node/20436%23comment-form
[2] https://clik.dva.gov.au/user/login?destination=node/20301%23comment-form
[3] https://clik.dva.gov.au/user/login?destination=node/20351%23comment-form
[4] https://clik.dva.gov.au/user/login?destination=node/20124%23comment-form