There has been a lot in the news lately about how poorly income protection and life insurers are treating people who have purchased policies. Like every industry, there are bad decisions and there are good decisions. However... like our teachers, police officers and politicians, little gets said about life insurers when they do good. Please know I am not an advocate for any life insurer or for any client. I am an advocate for good rehabilitation. And by good I mean timely, I mean customized … [Read more...]
The Health Benefits of Work in Action: A Case Study
April 15, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Continuing on from my post last week about the barriers to making the health benefits of work a reality, I wanted to explore what happens for our clients whenit is a reality. One of the unfortunate side effects of providing rehabilitation for our clients is that normally we're asked to cease our involvement after a person returns to work. This means that we rarely get to see the positive effect that being back at work can have on a person's life. However myself and my team are lucky enough … [Read more...]
Making The Health Benefits of Work a Reality
April 15, 2016 by Leave a Comment
So... we've all heard a lot about the health benefits of work in recently, haven't we? As Rehabilitation Professionals, this isn't new information to us. We're all about helping our clients utilise good work as a tool to improved function and recovery. But... we all know that the "health benefits of work" isn't exactly an easy thing to implement. It does require a big change to get everyone on board with this new mindset and to actually implement it in a meaningful way that results in … [Read more...]
What’s The Deal with Chronic Pain?
April 15, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Guest post by Natalie Taylor, Rehabilitation Counsellor at Purple Co. So here's a can of worms: what's happening for a person with chronic pain? I had the opportunity to attend a chronic pain recovery workshop this weekend at NeurRa (Neuroscience Australia) facilitated by Prof. Kevin Vowles. For most of his career, Dr Vowles has been researching how we can help people with chronic pain get their lives back. There was one fundamental truth that kept presenting itself to me over the … [Read more...]
Why Medical Opinion is King
February 18, 2016 by Leave a Comment
A reflective post from me today. I've been talking on the Purple Co blog recently about what it means when we try to pursue a medical certification of "fitness" for our clients - and how this determination can affect outcomes. Today I wanted to discuss the fact that the pendulum swings both ways. In terms of claims management, medical opinion is king. And often, the same is true for our clients. The disconnect occurs when medical opinion stops being able to present solutions to help … [Read more...]
Why Medical Certification of Capacity Rarely Leads to Change
February 3, 2016 by Leave a Comment
In last week's post I wrote about how uncertainty around change (and an absence of planning for change) makes many of our clients feel stuck. Stuck in their injury, illness or disability and worried that this is how it's always going to be. I want to explore how we still chase down medical certification as a way of bringing about change and helping our clients improve their function. Do you ever wonder why it rarely works? Why do many of our clients with a certified capacity for work … [Read more...]
Why Flare-Up Management is Crucial for Good Rehab
February 3, 2016 by Leave a Comment
In my series of posts on the evolution of rehab, I explored how various approaches lead to very different outcomes for our clients. In particular, in my 20 years' experience, prescriptive rehab that focuses on very rapid outcomes tends to have higher rates of recidivism. Obviously, this is no good for anyone involved. Poor flare-up management is at the core of this problem. The illnesses that our clients present with are now more chronic in nature, often with a natural pattern of … [Read more...]
Check Your Attitude!
January 6, 2016 by Leave a Comment
I wrote last time about how important it is to check in with our clients about their attitudes - about their illness or injury, the idea of recovery and one day returning to work. But what about our attitudes? There has been a lot of interest lately in how the attitudes of treating professionals impact on their patients' outcomes. In some ways, a health professional's expectations and beliefs about a client can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. How we convey our beliefs about our … [Read more...]
Pruning the Rehab Tree
December 24, 2015 by Leave a Comment
You may have read my last post where I discussed my lemon tree at length. I know how weird that sounds but I drew some pretty interesting parallels between how I treated a stinkbug infestation and how we currently manage rehab and claims. The key message is that if we continue to fixate solely on diagnosis, we miss a HUGE opportunity to do good rehab and help people get back to work. The diagnosis isn't as important as the person. The tricky part is that each person comes to us with a … [Read more...]
What is Excellence in Rehabilitation?
October 29, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Today we wrap up a series of posts on the evolution of rehab. We've spoken about the impact that the different levels of service (absent or medicalised; compliance or prescription-driven) have on insurers and our clients, and now, I want to reflect on what excellence really looks like in vocational rehabilitation. What is Excellence? I have no doubt that if you are reading this article, you are already striving for excellence in your work and your services. We all want the best outcomes for … [Read more...]
