Ontario is joining the movement to prevent needless work disability by supporting a stay at work/return to work initiative following the ACOEM 16  recommendations in their guidance document on "Preventing Needless Disability". Find out about the summit.....

Gowan Consulting is an active supporter of the 60 Summits Project and is involved in the steering committee to bring a summit to Ontario that will bring all stakeholders (employees, employers, physicians, health care professionals, union, insurers, WSIB, and government) together to prevent needless disability in the workplace.

If you are interested in finding out how you can be involved in the continued actions developed at the Ontario Summit to Prevent Work Disability on May 12 and 13, 2010 in Toronto contact Nancy Gowan.

ACTION DATES - May 26, 2010, June 15, 2010 and June 28, 2010 -  Contact us to find out the actions and how to get involved.

Ontario Summit Will Bring Together Key Stakeholders
to End Needless Work Disability
Toronto - May 12-13, 2010

The Ontario Summit to Prevent Work Disability is an invitation-only event to be held in Toronto on May 12-13, 2010. The 150 invited attendees will begin an on-going collaborative process aimed at closing a costly gap in Ontario's social fabric that results in millions of dollars lost every year in needless work disability. Needless work disability is lost time from work not because of the illness or injury that originally caused the disability, but due to delays in  communication, lack of modified work, and system disincentives. The attendees will build a provincial action plan to address these problems, based on the framework of the 60 Summits Project.

The 60 Summits Project offers a new model for preventing needless work disability. The attendees at the Ontario Summit will represent all key Ontario stakeholder groups involved when employees are ill or injured: employers, WSIB, insurers, unions, government, and healthcare. An on-going action group is expected to arise out of this Summit.

Every year thousands of people needlessly suffer employment disruption or loss in the current system of disability management in Ontario. The current model supports employees in staying off work longer than is medically required, hurting the employee's ability to regain health and return to work successfully. Too often employees who are off work on disability leave never return to employment of any kind, even though they are capable of working. Someone off work for one year has a less than 10 per cent probability of returning to work.

Currently, when employed people are affected by illness or injury they often discover that all the professionals involved in their "case" have their own agendas, sets of information, and systems of rules and processes. The Ontario Summit will bring together leaders in the stakeholder groups to close the gaps in this fragmented model and create a unified, collaborative system, thereby leading to less needless work disability.

The steering committee coordinating this Summit is a grassroots group of volunteers from various professions, sectors and stakeholder groups. Ontario's event is the second Summit held in Canada, and the 20th Summit of the 60 Summits Project, a North American initiative. Its founder, Dr. Jennifer Christian, will keynote and facilitate the Ontario Summit.

For more information refer to our website at www.60summits.org/on. Contact the steering committee
co-chairs for interviews or more details:  Ann Morgan (416) 290-3743 or Nancy Gowan (519) 670-4520.

Backgrounder
The Ontario Summit to Prevent Work Disability is an initiative that embraces the 60 Summits model to improve the workplace disability management system in Ontario. The model is described in a report called "Preventing Needless Work Disability by Helping People Stay Employed" written in 2006 by a group of American and Canadian physicians and published by the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM). The report makes 16 recommendations to shift the focus of compensation boards, insurance companies, employers, unions, lawyers, legislators and the medical community beyond managing illnesses and injuries after the fact, towards putting in place solutions to avoid or put a timely end to unnecessary work disability.

The 60 Summits project is a grassroots movement that seeks to create action groups in 50 American States and 10 Canadian provinces, to change the face of work disability in North America. The Ontario Summit event will gather together key stakeholder leaders to build an action plan that is feasible in and specific to Ontario.

Research tells us that:

• being at work contributes to a person's recovery from illness and injury
• employment is a significant social determinant of health
• prolonged time off work decreases chances of a successful return to work
• people who are off work for more than one year have a 10 per cent chance of returning to work of any kind
• many prolonged work absences begin with a minor illness or injury
• the employer cost of needlessly losing employees to work disability in Ontario is in the millions of dollars
• the increasing rates and cost of work disability in Ontario has a negative impact on Ontario's economy

The problem with the current disability management system:

• it creates prolonged absence from work when in most cases a short absence is required
• it is made up of many different players who all have their own agendas, rules and regulations, processes, vocabulary and expertise that often work at cross-purposes
• it does not address the perspective of the employee, and ignores the impact of the psychological response to illness and injury
• the onus is often on the family physician to manage the medical aspects of the absence, without appropriate compensation and understanding of the workplace issues
• workplaces have rigid processes and ideas about creating work modifications for the returning employee

The 60 Summit model based on the ACOEM report gives a framework that:

• adopts a work disability prevention model
• addresses behavioural and circumstantial realities that create or prolong work disability
• acknowledges the powerful contribution that motivation makes to outcomes and suggests changes to improve incentives for people to return to work
• invests in system and infrastructure improvements

Some of the specific recommendations include:

• increasing awareness among all stakeholders of how rarely work disability is medically required
• addressing normal human reactions to illness or injury that contribute to prolonged absence
• addressing social and workplace realities that contribute to prolonged absence
• finding ways to address psychiatric conditions earlier and more effectively as they are increasing as the primary reason for people to go off work, and also often happen as a consequence of illness or injury
• supporting physicians through compensation and education, and by creating a system for patient advocacy to get physicians out of a loyalties bind
• increasing on-the-job recovery and flexibility in work modification programs and accommodation processes
• simplifying and standardizing information exchange between employers/insurers and medical offices
• devising better strategies to detect and deal with bad faith behavior

To make this new model a reality, all the stakeholders have to be at the table to build an action plan that is doable in Ontario. The Ontario Summit to Prevent Work Disability will be a collaborative and interactive event that will build an action plan to end needless work disability in Ontario.
For further information, please see:

• Ontario Summit webpage

http://www.60summits.org/ON

• The ACOEM report "Preventing Needless Work Disability by Helping People Stay Employed"

http://www.60summits.org/pdfs/Introduction-to-New-Work-Disability-Prevention-Paradigm.pdf

• A brief introduction to the ACOEM report

http://www.60summits.org/pdfs/Introduction-to-New-Work-Disability-Prevention-Paradigm.pdf