An employer contacted Injury
Solutions Canada Inc. wanting
help with a claim that has
been going on for more than a year. Yes, the
injured worker has been off the work site
longer than one year! This should come as a
huge surprise to contractors. There should
be very few – if any – situations in which an
injured worker does not return to the work
site within days of an injury, let alone a year.
For every day an injured worker is away
from work due to an injury or illness, two
major things happen: first, insurance premiums
go up respectively with the amount
of time the worker is off; second, the longer
the worker is off, the greater the risk that
the worker will never come back to work
and will permanently be on benefits.
In either of the above situations, both
the company and the employees lose.
Premiums go up, companies become less
competitive in the business world and may
become less competitive in the bidding process
for contracts and/or excluded entirely.
The worker loses in that they lose their
sense of self worth with the connection to
work, their social status, social connection
with their work friends, social structure of
going to work, etc. Numerous studies have
shown that when employees return to work
as soon as possible after an injury, they heal
faster and more thoroughly.
This employer thought they had a return
to work policy but had not been
helped by the insurer, the Saskatchewan
Workers’ Compensation Board (WCB) – or
the health care provider, in this case a physician.
This employer thought they had to
wait until the employee was fully capable
of returning to full duties before they
could bring them back to the workplace,
a common misconception. The WCB case
manager never followed through by explaining
what the employer should do,
which is to accommodate the injured
worker with “other” suitable duties. The
physician should have provided a detailed
list of objective physical restrictions that
the injured worker could realistically perform
that would fit into the workplace.
What is the employer to do about it?
First, they need to clean up their own
house. They need to revise their return to
work program to reflect that all employees
Gone Too Long
How to deal with an open long-term claim
By Clifford Gerow, Injury Solutions Canada Inc.
KZENON / 123RF STOCK PHOTO
INJURY SOLUTIONS
thinkbigmagazine.ca | Quarter 3 2018 | Think BIG 57
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