Dr. J.'s Jottings: Upgrading Workers' Comp & Disability Benefits Systems

North Dakota, here we come!

We're putting the final touches on preparations before North Dakota's four Stakeholder Summits on Preventing Needless Work Disability the week of September 10-14.  These Summits will have a different "feel" than the prior ones in larger states have had, largely because of the small size of the cities we will be in.   

(If you're curious about North Dakota, go to wikipedia like I did or to the official North Dakota website. The largest city we will visit is Fargo with a metro area of about 175,000 people.  The state capital is Bismarck whose metro area has about 100,000 people.  The Grand Forks area is about the same size.  The smallest we will visit is Dickinson, with about 20,000 people.)

Workforce Safety & Insurance, the state's workers' compensation insurance fund, is the sole sponsor of this series of Summits  -- and boy have they been a great partner to work with!   Their planning team has been preparing for this for months, intent on building better relationships, improving communications, and increasing collaboration among employers, physicians, and WSI in order to improve overall outcomes in workers' compensation cases.  In these final days, WSI has put their employer account reps and nurse case managers on the phone, inviting employers and doctors to the meetings.  Happily, attendance looks like it will be good. 

I suspect that the attendees at this Summit will be quite different than the attendees at the most recent Summit held in California in June.   In California, there were a lot of specialists in disability management or occupational medicine, or corporate staff or labor representatives or non-profit organizations with a special interest in disability and return to work.  Many had never met each other before.

In North Dakota, we will be close to the ground in a predominantly rural state.  Not many companies there with corporate disability management staffs.  The room is likely to be filled with small business owners/managers and local practitioners -- and they may already know each other.  There's a severe shortage of doctors in some specialties and some towns.  This will be a conversation with "the front line."   In fact, there will be a panel of local doctors and employers as part of each of the Summits, reacting to the recommendations made in the new ACOEM work disability prevention guideline, and talking about which ones they believe can be implemented successfully in their community. 

One of the things I love about this 60 Summits Project is the unique flavor and features -- and people -- in the workers' compensation and disability benefits system of each new state I visit.  Given the comparatively harsh , remote, and rural quality of life in North Dakota, I bet I'll be learning some new perspectives.   I'm also willing to bet I'll hear the same major themes in North Dakota that are everywhere. 

1.The lack of a team approach to preventing needless work disability during the stay-at-work and return-to-work process is harming the well-being of individuals, companies, and communities.   

2.People of good will in these two most critical stakeholder groups are inspired by the new model of working together portrayed in the Guideline as a good way to achieve better outcomes of the worrkers' compensation system for both injured workers and their employers.

Bringing the 60 Summits idea to Montreal, Quebec

The 60 Summits Project is entering Canada for the first time.  [The "60" in our name comes from the number of US states (50) plus Canadian provinces (10).] 

I'll be in Montreal the week of August 20, and among other planned activities have invited a small number of people to join me in exploring the feasibility of creating a stakeholder summit to propagate the new work disabiltiy prevention paradigm there -- in other words, to bring The 60 Summits Project to Quebec.   

The purpose of the meeting is to answer these questions:

1.  Is the time ripe in the province of Quebec to build a widely-shared positive vision of how the stay-at-work and return-to-process should function -- and then make that a reality? 

2.  Should we capitalize on the new paradigm embodied in The American College of Occupational & Environmental Medicine's work disability prevention guideline and use it as the framework for discussion at a Stakeholder Summit on Preventing Needless Work Disability by Helping People Stay Employed?

3.  Are there desirable future outcomes that such a Summit might make possible?

4.  Are there enough people of good will with gumption and commitment to "improving the system" available and willing to do the work to plan and produce a Summit for Quebec?

Stay tuned -- We'll wait to see who shows up, and how they react to the idea.  For me, this meeting is going to be especially fun because I enjoy listening to and speaking French -- even though my ability is at about the level of a nursery school age child.  It will be fascinating to appreciate how these issues look to Canadians and particularly the Quebecois.

I'm also going to be in Montreal to give a lecture on disability prevention and the use of disability duration guidelines that will be filmed as part of an on-line curriculum for physicians who are working in the area of insurance and legal medicine.  Three Canadian physicians will be part of the session.  Again, it will be fun to engage in dialogue with physicians in a different country (and thus a different environmental context) about a topic of shared interest.