Matthew Richard Cochrane has not held a practising certificate since 2018, but in a 14-month-old decision publicly released only yesterday, the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal cancelled his registration and barred him from applying to re-register for two years.
Cochrane was convicted in the Auckland District Court in 2020 after admitting eight charges of dishonestly using a document over a 20-month period in 2015 and 2016.
He was sentenced to five months’ community detention at an Arrowtown address and 100 hours’ community work and ordered to repay the money.
In early 2015, he was working as a licensed chiropractor in Queenstown, Auckland’s Browns Bay and Waiheke Island when the ACC queried him about his unusually high treatment numbers.
When told his billing practices did not meet the legal threshold for ACC-funded treatment, he undertook to reduce his hours, but his billing behaviour continued.
He was first interviewed by the police in 2018, but continued to deny the charges for nearly two years.
Electronic appointments data showed he fraudulently claimed $134,578 from the ACC between March 2015 and October 2016.
In the latest decision, dated May 6 last year, tribunal chairwoman Alison Douglass said Cochrane had admitted his offending was "systematic and deliberate", and his convictions reflected adversely on his fitness to practise.
The offending showed a "complete disregard for the law and his professional and ethical obligations", and had damaged the profession’s reputation.
In mitigation, he had admitted the criminal charges, agreed to pay reparation and expressed remorse during a restorative justice meeting with an ACC representative.
The tribunal could not fine Cochrane because he had already been convicted, but ordered him to pay 40%, or $29,200, of the tribunal’s investigation and prosecution costs.
It declined his application for permanent name suppression.
The company under which Cochrane was operating during his offending, which traded as Bodyworks, was put into liquidation in 2017.
