From ICBC: Health Care Providers Enhanced Care Survey Results

Thanks to those of you who took the time to complete our Enhanced Care survey earlier this year. Launching Enhanced Care (EC) was the most significant shift in how we manage customers in our 40+ year history.

In order to understand how we’re doing and where there might be opportunities for improvement, we needed to hear from those working with our customers directly.

The survey was voluntary and open for one month to all health care providers in BC. With help from the provincial associations, a survey link was sent out and posted on our Business Partner page. In total, we received 434 responses.

What we’re doing well

There was positive feedback (59%) from physiotherapists, chiropractors, and kinesiologists about the elimination of initial reports and an even larger majority (71%) were positive about the functionality of the Health Care Provider Portal and Health Care Provider Invoicing and Reporting Application.

What we learned

More than half (56%) stated they were overall satisfied or neutral since the launch of EC, while 44% felt we could do better. Many of the providers noted that in principle they believe EC could be great but the implementation hasn’t been smooth.

Where we can do better

You told us we can improve the speed of our communication, the level of support we provide to resolve issues, the value of our advice and recommendations, and the treatment plan process including timeliness of response and differentiation between progress reports.

What we’ve done so far

We completed EC Refreshers that included answers to frequently asked questions for all health care provider groups in Nov/Dec 2021. Those webinars were recorded and are available on the Health Services Partners page.

We streamlined EC internal processes to reduce wait times for customer information, which helped eliminate bottlenecks and improved responsiveness of treatment plan requests.

First contact with the customer once a claim is open went from 28% in October receiving their first call within five days, to 94% in April.
Time to review treatment plans went from 81.6% in November being reviewed within 10 days, to 94.4% in April.

What we’re working on

We’re offering treatment plan webinars to all health care provider groups, which include detailed explanations, tips, and examples.
We’re updating resources for health care providers, including sample progress reports.
We continue to assess and improve our internal processes for efficiencies.
We’re providing clearer procedures for staff on when to access different tools for information from practitioners. For example, when to request a progress report.
We’ve implemented a new team of return-to-work and case management advisors to assist our front-line staff.
We’re continuing to recruit qualified recovery specialists and have recently onboarded 600 new staff to support EC.

And we’ll continue to review and adjust as we receive feedback.

Thirty-one percent of surveyed participants opted-in to participate in follow-up research, so for those of you who expressed interest, we’ll be following up in the coming months.

Thanks again for your support!