Reducing lost-time-to-injury rate: new firm addresses need for corporate health care for small-business sector. (Sudbury: Special Reports).

An insurance broker and a former union boss have joined forces to place themselves on the cutting edge of corporate health care in Sudbury with a new disability-management company.

Partners Dan Newell, who ran a Sudbury insurance and health-benefits business for 25 years, and Dave Campbell, a retired United Steelworkers president at Inco, intend to cut the ribbon on a new medical clinic this September.

With about a $1 million worth of building renovations now underway on the site of a former Chrysler dealership in Sudbury's west end, when Canadian Corporate Health Clinics Inc. opens for business this fall, small- and medium-sized employer groups will have access to prompt early-diagnostic care and rehabilitation services previously enjoyed by only larger, deep-pocketed, corporations.

Their Elm Street building, which they share with Dalron Construction, will feature suites of doctors offices, examination rooms, treatment areas and lecture rooms; offering clients an avenue to a stable of about 20 local medical specialists and caregivers on a regular clinical basis.

"We're really lucky in this community," says Newell. "We have a tremendous core of really fine physicians; we just want to utilize that."

As their name implies, they claim it is a one-of-a-kind concept they hope to eventually export to other communities across the North and Canada.

As agents for MedCan, Canada's largest disability-management company, they have constructed a special package program for the North to allow small businesses to enjoy the same advantages as large outfits, since MedCan works primarily with companies of more than 1,000 employees.

"The problem is coming into a community in Northern Ontario, there are only so many Incos; we need a program designed for small business from 25 to 300 people," says Campbell.

"The big clients have the ability to access those services because they have the resources," he says. "The small ones would like to access (the services), but it's too expensive, cumbersome and administratively difficult for employee groups of 35 people to manage a health process that Inco pays in excess of $2 million a year for.Now we've put together a process that allows them to access (it)."

Newell credits Campbell with being instrumental in bringing MedCan and Inco together in helping to pare down the nickel producer's previous lost-time-to-injury rate.

The average lost-time injury at Inco in the 1980s was well in excess of 100 days. After the program was implemented, it was shaved to 20 days with savings in the tens of millions of dollars.

The clinic, which will employ about 20 full-time staff, will offer a variety of medical programs, including carpel tunnel testing, physiotherapy and exercise programs, as well as pre-employment medical screening, wellness seminars, psychiatric services, drug and alcohol counselling, and other educational services, all under one roof.

The emphasis, they say, will be on patient dignity, respect and professionalism with a high level of customer service to address small injuries in a timely fashion before they become big problems.

Losing a valuable employee to disability while they queue up in the fragmented OHIP system, waiting months for tests or treatments, can cost a small company hundreds of thousands of dollars in future economic losses unless that case is properly managed in a timely fashion that gets that employee back on the job quicker, Campbell says.

"This is a way for employers groups to manage and reduce their costs," says Campbell. "That's what we are; we're intervenors to manage a process."

"We keep hearing that Sudbury's underserviced and the doctors keep getting crapped on, but it's not the doctors' (fault), it's the system.

"We just have to manage it better and allow those dollars to stay in the North," rather than sending injured or sick workers down to Toronto, Michigan or New York state for treatment, he says.

Newell says the clinic, which is run by a private eight-member board of local investors, has fielded interest from employers both large and small in cities across the North on word of mouth alone, and they have a full slate of out-of-town seminars planned for this fall.

Through eight days in August, they signed up 15 clients and expect to have as many as 50 by late September.

www.cchc.ca