By Ian Ross
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.
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Dave Campbell and Dan Newell |
Partners Dan Newell, who ran a Sudbury insurance and health benefits business for 25 years, and Dave Campbell, a retired United Steelworkers? president, 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 at Elm and Lorne Streets in Sudbury, when Canadian Corporate Health Clinics Inc. opens for business this fall, small and medium-sized employer groups can 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 that 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, but its 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.?
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.
If it sounds suspiciously like an American-style HMO system, consider that health insurance premiums are the among the greatest costs for most small employers, they say.
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.
?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,? he adds, rather than sending injured or sicker workers down to Toronto, Michigan or New York state for treatment.
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 just on word of mouth alone and they have a full slate of out-of-town seminars planned for this fall.
For more information, visit www.cchc.ca.
Ian Ross writes for Northern Ontario Business. It will publish a special feature on Sudbury in the September issue, available on newsstands Sept. 9.
