Compliant v Prescriptive Rehabilitation – Where Do We Go From Here?

As we near the end of this series on the evolution of rehab (click here for the previous posts), I want to talk about the next rungs on the ladder to excellence – compliant rehab and prescriptive rehab.

Now compliant rehab, as we know, is a process that is entirely driven by certification of capacity and box-ticking. These certifications drive rehab decisions, and where a desirable certification is not given, we go into overdrive trying to arrange case conferences and pleading with practitioners to PLEASE sign off on this person so we can start threatening them with loss of benefit if they don’t get back to work. Or, we throw more treatment at them and hope it sticks. You can see that the client is entirely lost in the process.

The biggest limitation of a compliance-driven process is the fact that it reduces our client, a dynamic, unique individual, down to their medical condition. We talk about their fitness (or lack thereof), but what we really need to be discussing is how work is going to help them live they life they want.

Our discussions are so centered around HOW to get off claim, that we forget about the WHY. [Tweet This]

There is no opportunity for creativity when we compliance-manage claims. And the motivator for our clients is that big scary stick, that loss of benefit, which is NOT the way to successfully manage claims in the long run.

So… what else might work?

The services and support we offer to clients are becoming increasingly sophisticated… but how can we improve even more?

A level above, we begin looking at prescriptive rehab, which as I’ve stated is really the status quo for our industry today. There is an admirable attempt to build rapport with clients, and we’ve put away the big scary stick (mostly), but we still have a long way to go before we reach excellence.

With prescriptive rehabilitation, our client is still stuck in the passenger seat. Rehab decisions are still centered around the needs of the insurer in many instances, namely, to reduce claim duration. But this is short sighted, and this fact emphasises the view of rehabilitation being seen as a cost drain rather than an investment.

We could see incredible broadening of the scope of support and services available to our clients if we took a longer-term view. I would love to see wider acceptance of the type of services that help clients maintain their hard-earned progress. These are the sort of intensive but high-yield services that empower our clients to deal with setbacks and inevitable flare ups, and most importantly, to support them on a journey where they are fully in the drivers seat. Let’s shift the focus from the “how” to the “why”.

So how do we maintain gains and achieve durable outcomes? How do we achieve excellence? I will save my thoughts on that for next week’s post, but until then, I want to ask you:

What does excellence in rehabilitation look like to you? Where can we improve to offer the best service possible to our clients?

– Jo

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jo Muirhead is a Rehabilitation Counsellor with over 20 years’ experience in vocational rehabilitation. She owns 2 successful businesses and is the founder, director and principal consultant of Purple Co, a specialist team of consultants that help people manage their illness, injury or disability and reclaim their lives through work.

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