One of the key meetings that I wanted to attend this year was the Florida Summit on Preventing Needless Work Disability that was held June 1-2 in Orlando, Fla. I had to scratch my plans at the last minute, but the gracious event’s organizers sent me an overview of the meeting.
If you have not heard or read about the 60 Summits Project and are involved in workers’ compensation/disability management, take some time to review the website and see if there has been a program in your area. Jennifer Christian, the founder of this important movement, has worked hard to motivate those at the grassroots levels to come together to see how they can impact change in their communities. What follows is the story of Florida. Many thanks to Brenda Jacobsen, the organizer of the Florida Summit, for this overview.
The Florida Summit on Preventing Needless Work Disability was the latest in a series of 12 multi-stakeholder meetings held throughout North America during the last year as part of the 60 Summits Project. The two-day summit was organized by the Florida Stay at Work Consortium, a group of volunteers, as part of a grassroots effort started by Dr. Jennifer Christian of the 60 Summits Project.
The goal of the event was to propagate a new disability prevention paradigm. The summit involved more than 100 professionals from five major stakeholder groups: practicing physicians, other clinicians, employers, insurance carriers/third party administrators, and labor. The participants were divided up into multi-stakeholder groups for roundtable discussions. Each group looked for ways to analyze and create solutions using the American College of Occupational & Environmental Medicine white paper entitled “Preventing Needless Work Disability by Helping People Stay Employed” as a starting point. To read the report, click here.
The evaluations tabulated after the event showed that 97 percent of the attendees agreed that their attendance was a good use of their time. Out of the 103 individuals who completed the exhausting and challenging eight-hour sessions, 69 signed up to join the ongoing Consortium, and they have accepted active roles in perpetuating the work that was begun that day. Eighty of the attendees requested to be kept on the Florida mailing list and will continue to receive updates of their workgroup’s activities through their group facilitator.
In response to this groundswell of support, the original steering committee that developed the Florida Summit over the last calendar year agreed to host a follow-up meeting for the purpose of sharing each work group’s progress and to develop an ongoing Florida Coalition. This multi-stakeholder Coalition is open to all interested parties and will meet again in Orlando on Friday, August 6, at noon. If you are interested in learning more about the 60 Summits Project, click here, or if you wish to be involved in the Florida Coalition, contact Brenda Jacobsen at bjacobsen@lakesideoccmed.com.
To close, the staff of Across My Desk, Case in Point and the Case Management Resource Guide would like to wish you and your family a safe and happy Fourth of July!
See you next week,
Anne Llewellyn, RN-BC, MS, BHSA, CCM, CRRN
Editor-in-Chief of Across My Desk, Case in Point magazine, and the Case Management Resource Guide
allewellyn@dorlandhealth.com
