“Fewer workers getting help for ‘serious injuries,’ statistics show” / Sara Mojtehedzadeh (Toronto Star, Jul. 3, 2016)
“The number of workers accepted into [the WSIB’s] serious injury program that dramatically improves their access to medical care has been cut by more than half over the past five years, according to statistics requested by the Star – part of what critics call a systematic reduction in fair compensation for vulnerable Ontario workers.”
While Ontario’s workers’ compensation board attributes the dramatic plunge to a drop in claims, advocates from legal clinics and the private bar point to changes in policy and practice which reduce workers’ permanent impairment ratings by identifying pre-existing conditions and by often refusing to acknowledge long-term psychological problems. Increasingly fewer workers are now deemed to reach the 60% impairment threshold which would let them access the board’s Serious Injury Program. (According to the WSIB’s own statistics, permanent injury awards dropped by 37% between 2012 and 2014).
Cost-cutting at whose expense?
The June 13 Toronto Star article on consultant Christopher Brigham (“Doctor hired by WSIB in U.S. legal battle over slashed medical benefits”) featured an example of how the recommended “more aggressive” claims approach to use of pre-existing conditions in determining permanent injuries can harm injured workers. Tractor-trailer driver Fernando Paul, whose workplace accident left him with a damaged lower spine, lack of control over bodily functions and struggling with mental health issues, was close to qualifying for the 60% impairment threshold and additional support provided by the Serious Injury Program. A 2012 MRI, however, found he might have a mild degenerative disc disease in a completely different part of his spine – enough, it seems, for the Board to subsequently halve his impairment rating.
Currently receiving “next to no compensation”, the wheelchair-bound worker is left dependent on his wife for full-time care – more casualties of the austerity agenda?
Related:
- IAVGO. 2016 Jun. 10. WSIB Open Letter on Health Care
- Lian, Jean. 2015 Jun. 25. “Spiralling Down” OHS Canada (the cascading effects of permanent work injury)