Toronto • May 28-29, 2010 • Student Day and Workshops: May 27
Paper: Call centre model improves timelines and outcomes of integrated disability mangement program
Download Presentation PDF:
Session : 15. Sustainable RTW (3/3)
Day/Time: Saturday at 14:00
Room: St. David Room, 3rd Floor
Objectives:
To implement a cost-effective, efficient, effective and comprehensive workplace health call centre for a large, multi-union health-care organization and analyze the results. Overarching goals of the call centre include: improving processing timelines; enhancing quality of data collected; and improve overall disability outcomes in the areas of both workplace incident reporting (Phase I) and occupational health communicable disease management (Phase II).
Methods:
Phase I: Incident reporting service launched January 2008 providing paperless reporting of workplace incidents. A live operator receives the detail of each incident, captures the data in the Workplace Health Incident Tracking and Evaluation (WHITETM) database, and generates an e-mail to the manager for completion of accident investigation and corrective action follow up. Information collected in WHITE is used to complete the Employer’s Report (Form 7) to WorksafeBC and is submitted electronically. Phase II: Occupational health services launched January 2009 providing baseline health history intake, follow-up of blood/body fluid exposures, and communicable disease outbreak management. Mass immunization clinics replace one-on-one appointments and ensure that staff have appropriate immunity status for vaccine preventable communicable diseases. Data capture methods include: manual tracking of all call details; staff survey administered quarterly to collect satisfaction, awareness and effectiveness of call centre resources; timeline and intervention milestones captured in WHITETM database.
Results:
Results to date are impressive. Form 7 submission timeline reduced from an average of 16.9 days to 1.72 days, with a mode of 0.04 days. Claim duration has been reduced from 49.2 days pre-call centre to 36.5 days. Customer satisfaction is high. Percentage of staff are participating in accident investigations with manager increased (86% vs. 56%).
Health history completion for new staff has increased to 56% from 30% pre-call centre, taking 6-8 minutes on average. Communicable disease outbreak follow-up timelines have been reduced from days to hours. Personnel required to offer the above services have been reduced.
Conclusions:
Successful implementation of the call centre has had a very positive impact on the work undertaken by the workplace health portfolio at Fraser Health and results are impressive. Improvements in accessibility and timeliness of service provision have allowed streamlining of human resources to offer a better program that assists both staff and management in reducing the impact of injuries and illness in the workplace. In an economic time where resources for disability management services are scarce, improving the quality and effectiveness of programs/services, while at the same time decreasing overall resources required to provide such services, is an important imperative.
