Dr. J’s First Jottings
Last Friday, a report arrived in the mail entitled “Shaping the Future of Occupational Medicine: Finding Opportunities for Collaboration”. It summarizes the results of the American College of Occupational & Environmental Medicine’s Cornerstone Summit held in late January 2007. The by-invitation-only meeting was the College’s first step towards building relationships with employers and payers.
The culmination of about five years of effort, the Summit began as a blinding flash in which I realized that ACOEM, the professional society for occupational physicians, had no “face” turned towards employers and payers, despite the fact that they write the checks for virtually all occupational medicine services. ACOEM had traditionally focused on its own members, the public policy arena, and in particular the legislative and regulatory arena, especially federal agencies like OSHA and the DOT. Things are changing: today the ACOEM website has some portion of its pages designed for purchasers or users of occupational medicine services.
After leading a couple of preliminary smaller projects in this area, I chaired the committee that planned the Cornerstone Summit, and facilitated the daylong session. The 7 employers who attended were not just large national organizations (Wal-Mart, Tyson Foods, Marriott International, the US Postal Service), but also regional (Reinhart Food Service, First Energy) and local (Duke University) employers. The 8 payers present included some really big ones (Liberty Mutual, AIG, State Compensation Fund of California, Sedgwick CMS) but also some local ones (the Texas Association of School Boards, Unisource Administrators from Florida, Workforce Safety & Insurance (the North Dakota state workers’ compensation fund), the Food Industry Self-Insurance Fund of New Mexico.) Ten ACOEM members attended, representing the three funders of the project: the ACOEM Board of Directors, the ACOEM Private Practice section and ACOEM Work Fitness & Disability section.
Originally intended to be a wide-ranging discussion about the future of occupational medicine, the employers and payers in the room mostly wanted to focus on the new ACOEM work disability prevention guideline and how the three parties at the table might be able to work together more effectively in the stay-at-work and return-to-work process. Four work groups, each with physician, employer and payer members, were formed and will continue to work together develop, refine, and try out new ideas that emerged during the Summit. They are: (a) forms and tools; (b) education; (c) processes and models; and (d) incentives and legislative mechanisms.
You can get a copy of the Cornerstone Summit report by calling ACOEM at 847-818-1800.
