We're improving our services

New claims management system will reduce your paperwork and improve our response time

At WorkSafeBC, we’re in the midst of improving and enhancing the way we provide services to workers, employers, and service providers. While you probably won’t see significant changes until mid-2007 when implementation is scheduled to begin, we want to share with you some of the ways you’ll be affected by and benefit from the new systems and processes.

Our project, which is called Claims Management Solutions (CMS), involves the entire life cycle of a claim, from information collection to termination of benefits. We are working with the Workplace Safety & Insurance Board of Ontario (WSIB), sharing knowledge and experience, and developing technology with Curam Software to achieve common goals.

Reducing your paperwork

The Curam software will be customized to provide us with the technology to achieve our CMS goals. It will automate routine tasks, reducing the amount of paperwork and administration required within and between your offices and ours. Ultimately, it will allow us to focus more on our most important role: helping injured workers return to work.

Streamlining recovery plans

We’re working with the physician community to develop what we are calling “roadmaps” for some of the most common conditions experienced by injured workers. These evidence-based best practice guidelines are being developed based on industry best practices and experience. The roadmaps are templates for a recovery plan and will include suggested content and timing of clinical processes, including evaluation, diagnostic tests, and therapeutic interventions. These roadmaps will serve as guidelines—not prescriptions—for clinical care and can be modified to the particular needs of an injured worker.

How you’ll benefit

Our CMS project is designed to provide multiple benefits to our health care service providers:

• Improved electronic information gathering—Our reports will be more case specific, customized to the type of injury, which should reduce the amount of information we’ll be asking you to provide.

• Faster response time—A medical or nurse advisor will contact you—maybe even before you submit your first report—because the system will alert the appropriate health care services advisor as soon as a worker or employer submits a specific type of claim. As a result, medical resources and return-to-work options will be available sooner, and responses to your requests for assistance will be handled more efficiently.

• Faster, easier access to WorkSafeBC medical information—You’ll have faster, easier access, electronically and through our medical and nurse advisors, to our medical information.

• Proactive claims management—The new system will allow our claims managers to proactively manage high-risk claims, increasing service levels and the speed and consistency of our decision making.

• Improved return-to-work outcomes for injured workers—Care plan templates—based on research, knowledge, and experience of evidence-based best practices—will be available immediately, improving return-to-work outcomes.

• Faster payment of your invoices—Improvements in technology will allow automatic approval of some invoices and will assist our staff to quickly review other invoices.

Although the CMS project is still in the design phase, we’re already excited about the improved services we’ll be able to provide to you and your injured worker patients.

—Don Graham, MD
WCB Chief Medical Officer