Source: Radio New Zealand
Jeremy Buxton’s life changed forever after a car accident left him with a traumatic brain injury. But he says the hardest battle wasn’t recovery. It was fighting the system meant to help him.
On a rainy winter night in Waikato, Jeremy Buxton wheels his barbecue into the garage to cook dinner under cover.
He lights the grill then walks away.
Minutes later, his wife Rhonda sees smoke seeping through a hole in the garage wall. She runs to the door to find the barbecue engulfed in flames.
“How we didn’t lose the house that night is beyond me,” she says.
It is not an isolated incident.
“The number of times he’s just about burnt the house down with cooking … the pots that I’ve had to throw out.”
Buxton once drove 300 kilometres a day as a delivery driver, juggling up to 100 phone calls before dinner. Now if he puts the jug on and someone knocks at the door, he forgets about it entirely.
“I’ve no retention of short-term memory.”
Nine years after a car crash left him with a traumatic brain injury, his speech still slurs. His hands tremble and he lives with constant brain fog and fatigue so crushing he rests for hours each day just to function.
But Buxton says the hardest part has not only been living with his disabilities, but the long fight for recognition with the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC).
The Buxtons are still battling ACC over how Jeremy’s injury is recorded; the grief of not getting the treatment he needed sooner; and the shock of learning the agency secretly surveilled him. He also believes the agency has breached his privacy dozens of times.
“I’ve lost all trust,” he says.
Jeremy and his wife Rhonda, taken before he suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident nine years ago. The pair are now separated but remain close friends. RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
The man he was
Before the crash, Rhonda says, Buxton was “the most amazing, fun-loving person”.
“He never argued. He was just laughing.”
At home, they were a team. If Rhonda was vacuuming, he would grab the vacuum off her. If she was cooking, he would step in beside her. He wasn’t the kind of man who came home, opened a beer and sat in front of the television.
“If you were up doing something, he was helping. If anything, he’d tell you to sit down.”
He was the main caregiver to their son, Jayden, who was just 15-months-old at the time of the accident.
Now, he’s “a completely different person,” says Rhonda.
Buxton is easily overwhelmed, noise can feel unbearable, his patience is thin.
“He’s still a wonderful dad,” says Rhonda. “But it’s really hard.”
The crash and the classification
In September 2016, Buxton was out on a delivery run when he crossed the centre line and hit an oncoming vehicle. He had to be cut from the wreckage and flown to Middlemore Hospital, where he was initially diagnosed with concussion and back and neck injuries.
Over the following weeks, his symptoms escalated. He struggled to find words. His limbs went limp at times. He was dizzy, disoriented and exhausted. For months, he slept for up to 17 hours a day.
Clinicians treating him described his condition as a moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury, yet ACC documents recorded his injury as a ‘brain injury-other’ or ‘mild traumatic brain injury’.
The distinction matters.
A mild traumatic brain injury is generally expected to resolve within weeks or months. Moderate to severe brain injuries can require long-term therapy, complex rehabilitation and ongoing support.
Early access to the right treatment is critical, says Brain Injury Waikato community education and support officer Josiah Ploeg.
“The research is really clear that the sooner treatment can be accessed for a traumatic brain injury, the better.”
Delayed treatment can lengthen recovery and lead to problems later on with things like keeping in work, managing relationships and increased mental health challenges, says Ploeg.
ACC’s classification meant Buxton was being sent to concussion programmes, despite warnings he needed much more help.
The concussion trap
A month after the crash, Jeremy’s physiotherapists emailed ACC urgently, warning he had “SIGNIFICANT issues” and needed more intensive management than they were funded to provide.
“Our staff have strung along the best they can,” one wrote after not getting a reply to an urgent request to ACC for more help three weeks earlier.
As his lawyer discovered years later, those urgent emails were read by ACC staff but never added to his file, nor acted upon.
Instead, Buxton was sent to concussion services that he says did not match his condition.
“They didn’t give me a chance to get better.
“They kept pushing me on concussion programmes that were no good to me … I couldn’t even stay awake, let alone concentrate.”
He describes the mismatch in simple terms.
“It was like I had an accident and broke my leg in 10 places, but ACC said, ‘Here’s a bandage.’”
A photo of Jeremy, his wife and children before he suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident nine years ago. RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
ACC suspends cover
In April 2017, ACC cut Buxton’s cover and weekly compensation entirely.
The decision was based on reports it had obtained from a psychiatrist and neurologist, who concluded his ongoing symptoms were “no longer the result” of his head injury.
The letter arrived just as his GP referred him to a specialist traumatic brain injury rehabilitation centre in Auckland. ACC would no longer be paying, so the Buxtons had to pay thousands themselves for Jeremy to attend.
They also paid for their own medical report confirming Buxton’s ongoing symptoms were indeed linked to his head injury.
In March 2018, ACC reinstated his cover and back-paid his compensation but Rhonda says that year without financial support and treatment nearly broke them.
“When they booted us off, my work was amazing, they fully supported us. If it wasn’t for them we probably would have had to sell the house.”
Headway chief executive Stacey Mowbray says problems often arise when people do not recover within expected timeframes.
“The big challenge is if they go through that concussion service and they haven’t recovered.”
After completing a concussion service, some people can find themselves in “a little bit of a black hole” while waiting for approvals for further support.
“This is what we are hearing from our community as a problem. They often feel lost. There’s a lot of unknown, a lot of anxiety … and unfortunately, some people in that period can regress.”
“Possible false claim”
Concerned by ACC’s initial decision to stop cover, the Buxtons requested Jeremy’s full ACC file.
What they found in the box of documents that arrived shocked them – and the fallout still haunts Buxton today.
While he was sleeping up to 17 hours a day in the months after his accident, the documents revealed that ACC suspected he might be faking his injuries.
The allegation came from within ACC.
Internal documents described the case as a “possible false claim”, noting he was in a “better financial position” on weekly compensation than in his job as a casual delivery driver.
The couple learnt that in December 2016, an ACC investigator had sat outside their home, watching and recording Buxton’s movements.
Surveillance notes recorded Buxton “cleaning or cooking on the barbeque”, noting the exact clothes he was wearing.
Another entry describes him carrying a carton in the garage, though it’s not certain it’s Buxton because it’s dark.
Several pages of the report, including photos taken of the couple by ACC, were redacted.
ACC closed the investigation in March 2017, finding nothing to warrant further investigation, but its report did not officially exonerate him. It was only after Buxton complained in 2023 that ACC told him it had found no fraud or wrongdoing on his behalf.
Buxton says learning he had been watched felt – and still feels – like a violation.
“It feels like a home invasion,” he says. “When somebody has followed and watched you, you don’t feel safe.”
In its response to his 2023 complaint, ACC did apologise for stress the investigation caused him, adding it had followed normal processes and policies in his case. Buxton thinks ACC doesn’t really understand the impact its investigation had on him. He wants an acknowledgment of this, and a more formal apology.
“That would make me feel safe.”
RNZ asked ACC what its threshold and policies were for surveilling clients suspected of fraud. It replied saying it would respond to RNZ’s questions as an Official Information Act request, which can take about a month or longer.
Buxton says the knowledge that someone has followed and watched you “feels like a home invasion”. RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
Investigation disclosure
When Jeremy requested his full ACC file, a copy of what was released to him was stored on the agency’s case management system, meaning staff with access to his file could see the investigation report.
It’s understood such reports are typically locked away in a separate part of ACC’s records system. But this appears not to have been the case for Buxton.
Buxton believes the presence of this material may have influenced how some case managers treated him.
ACC disputes that characterisation.
In a statement, the agency said it could not disclose what information initially prompted the investigation but it has an obligation to examine any allegations that someone may be receiving support they are not entitled to.
A copy of the investigation material was put on Buxton’s file after it was given to him as a record of this disclosure. The description of the material did not indicate it contained investigation material, ACC said.
But there are discrepancies in how it has handled the information.
When Buxton complained about the investigation material being visible on his claim file, ACC initially told him the report had not been placed there.
Months later, it admitted it was on his file, and withdrew its earlier finding.
Buxton lodged another complaint, asking why he had been given incorrect information. That complaint remains unresolved.
‘World of grey’
Dedicated fraud investigation units operate across several government departments. The Ministry for Social Development handled more than 6000 cases and secured 45 prosecutions last financial year, according to its annual report.
Information about ACC’s unit, including its policies, are harder to come by, says lawyer and advocate Warren Forster.
“They operate in a world of grey. It’s definitely part of an exit strategy that ACC uses, and they’re currently ramping up that exit strategy.”
In the past, ACC’s Integrity Services unit has had KPIs and Return on Investment measures.
In 2018/19, the unit was expected to save the agency $8 for every dollar it spent, saving about $45 million.
ACC says questions about the unit’s current targets will be answered under the OIA.
It appears the unit may be in line for expansion, as the agency looks to cut programmes and the number of long-term claimants.
Buxton’s investigation reflects a more traditional model of fraud detection where people come under scrutiny following tip-offs.
But a recent independent review of ACC’s performance suggests its moves to a more sophisticated system.
It found the unit’s team of 22 full time staff lacked capacity to properly address fraud and recommends introducing real-time monitoring to analyse claims, payments and billing from providers to detect suspicious patterns earlier.
ACC lawyer and advocate Warren Forster says spying on ACC clients is not common but it can be “very problematic”. RNZ / Ian Telfer
Forster says the number of ACC clients who end up being surveilled is “pretty low”, but they can be “very problematic.”
“I had a client who was being surveilled. They were following him around with private investigators.”
When he raised his concerns with his psychiatrist he was told he was delusional, only to find out later he was actually being followed.
Another former client, a sexual abuse survivor, discovered a private investigator hired by ACC had been looking in her windows, Forster claims.
“You can imagine the impact of that on a person.”
Forster believes ACC needs to be more open about its investigations and the impact it can have on vulnerable clients.
“Particularly with people who are distressed or who have traumatic brain injuries or PTSD. To send someone around to follow them, creates an incredible amount of distress.”
There needs to be a system where treatment providers are alerted if patients are being investigated, he says.
“ACC needs to have a way to respond appropriately, because otherwise we’re just causing further harm.”
The coding dispute
In 2018, Buxton’s lawyer at the time wrote to ACC asking it to correct the classification of his injury to clinicians’ diagnoses of a moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury.
The letter was not answered. Bogged down by managing Jeremy’s injuries while caring for a toddler, the Buxtons didn’t chase it up for several years.
In February 2024, ACC admitted its internal coding was limited but reassured him this did not disadvantage him in any way.
Buxton disagrees.
“When I go to treatment providers, they see ‘brain injury – other’ so they say they can’t help me for my moderate brain injury,” he says. “So I’m trapped.”
The current classifications of mild, moderate and severe don’t always reflect how a person recovers, says Mowbray.
Overseas, a rethink is already underway.
The United States is among the first countries to move away from relying solely on the Glasgow Coma Scale – the standard tool used for more than five decades – and adopt a new classification framework known as the CBI-M, which Mowbray says better reflects the complexities and variabilities of brain injury.
The new system, which has yet to be formally adopted by clinicians in New Zealand, moves from categorising injuries as mild, moderate or severe to more of a scale.
“It’s quite an exciting development, acknowledging that maybe the way it was measured in the past doesn’t work for us now with [what] we know about brain injury recovery,” says Mowbray.
“It would allow us to acknowledge that every concussion, every brain injury is different, that every single one will follow a different path, a different timeframe for recovery.”
ACC and Health New Zealand both say they are closely monitoring medical developments in this area.
If adopted it could make a huge difference to the growing number of traumatic brain injuries.
New Zealand research published last year called brain injuries the ‘silent epidemic’, representing the greatest contributor to death and disability of all trauma-related injuries.
It found ACC brain injury claims rose by 48 percent to 53,731 between 2017 and 2023, compared to 9 percent population growth over the same period.
The lawyer’s investigation, and ACC’s response
In December 2025, Buxton’s lawyer wrote to ACC alleging at least 30 privacy breaches, including unrecorded access to his file and missing documents – the early physiotherapy warnings among them.
The failure to act on early warnings has been “extremely costly for Jeremy,” she wrote, while inaccuracies and disclosure of investigation material had caused “profound anxiety, lack of sense of safety and loss of trust.”
As well as a formal apology for the surveillance, Buxton is also seeking out-of-scope payment for the harm caused, and is considering legal action over the privacy breaches.
ACC says it acknowledges Buxton’s concerns that the injury coding and fraud investigations have impacted the support he has received from it.
“We have investigated these matters thoroughly in the past and apologised to him for his experience,” ACC’s Head of Client Recovery Matthew Goodger said in a statement.
“While we are aware these matters still feel unresolved for him, we are confident they have been appropriately addressed and there has been no impact on the support he has received from ACC, or how his claim has been managed.”
However, ACC admits it “missed” an additional personality change claim filed by Buxton’s GP in December 2024.
“We are following up on this with urgency,” said Goodger.
ACC was investigating the alleged privacy breaches raised by Buxton’s lawyer and the request for an out of scope payment.
“We will continue to look into any concerns he has and if we’ve made mistakes or fallen short in the service we have provided, we will of course apologise and take steps to put this right.”
The impact of a traumatic brain injury goes beyond the person injured. RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
The ripple effect
A traumatic brain injury doesn’t just impact the individual, says Mowbray.
“It’s a whanau, community and workplace injury. It impacts everyone.
“ACC funds some amazing rehab programmes that focus on the individual. But we’d like to see more support for whanau.”
ACC’s Traumatic Brain Injury Strategy 2017-2021 highlighted the importance of peer support and support for whanau.
“It was never followed through unfortunately,” says Mowbray.
Only five of the report’s 22 actions were completed, with a further six partially completed.
ACC could not immediately say what the current status of the remaining actions was, saying it would respond to RNZ’s questions through the OIA process.
Ploeg says brain injured people often experience strong emotions and it is important these are recognised, listened to and addressed.
“Managing these emotions, these strong emotions after a brain injury, for some people, can be really challenging.”
Having supports around them that understand these symptoms is key to minimising their impact.
“It’s really important that those kinds of symptoms are listened to and understood, so that strategies and changes can be brought online.”
The cost
Jeremy and Rhonda still call themselves best friends.
But they no longer live together.
“It was Jeremy’s decision,” Rhonda says quietly, “He wanted to give me my life back.”
Caring for him while working full-time and raising their son has taken a toll. So did fighting a bureaucracy neither of them fully understood.
“They push so much on us to look after him. Yes, he’s my husband. But I’m not a nurse. I’m not a full-time caregiver. I’m sure as hell not a psychologist.
“I’m also the ex-wife now but they still leave it for me to deal with.”
Rhonda says dealing with ACC has been an “eye opener” and most New Zealanders would have no idea how difficult the system can be to navigate.
“We went into ACC with an open mind thinking ‘well, he’s had an accident, we’re going to be okay. We’re going to be looked after.’”
She says the system wore them down.
“You lose the will to fight.”
ACC ended Buxton’s vocational rehabilitation sessions in January and has offered to continue his psychologist sessions.
He says he needs these not for his brain injury, but for the stress of dealing with ACC and still-raw trauma of being surveilled by the agency.
He is now waiting to hear if his therapy sessions will be approved for this purpose.
He’s been told he needs to reduce his stress in order to help his recovery, but that’s not been easy, he says.
His body weeps with stress-induced psoriasis, which requires regular injections in hospital.
“My skin has been falling apart because of stress. I would like them [ACC] to recognise this.”
The anxiety he still feels about being investigated for fraud all those years ago is so crippling he can’t even enjoy a trip to the park with his son Jayden, who is now 10.
“Taking your child to the park should be the most joyous thing you can do,” he says.
“For me, it is a nightmare. I see people but wonder if they’re following us.”
“If they had said ‘we’re sorry this happened’, I would know we’re safe.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
