EAN had “a lot of weaknesses”: IBC

The Ontario government’s proposal for an “expert assessor network” (EAN) has “a lot of weaknesses” according to feedback from the insurance industry.
The proposal has been sent back to the drawing board, it was confirmed Friday by the office of Mike Colle, the man leading the Liberal government’s auto reform efforts. For the insurance industry’s part, there were concerns about the scope of the new system, which was intended to replace the designated assessment centers (DACS), says Mark Yakabuski, Ontario region vice president for the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC).
Yakabuski says the Liberals still appear committed to replacing DACs, but feedback from many sectors convinced them “they were not on the right track”. Insurers felt the scope of the new system was “excessively ambitious”, he adds.
The DAC system was used largely by insurers for purposes of dispute resolution, rather than as a means to assess every injury case. To expand the role of the system would place pressure on both human and financial resources, Yakabuski notes, with concerns specifically about the ability to attract enough qualified assessors to maintain a quality system. Also, the industry needs to be focused on keeping the lid on claims costs and not replacing DACs considered by both industry and government to be costly and inefficient with something which might add further expense.
Any new system should also be aimed at building in incentives to use assessment time as efficiently as possible, says Yakabuski. This should include a means of ensuring the quality of assessments, so that they are not thrown out at arbitration or in court. This could be an opportunity of introducing quality control into the health care side of auto accident claims, for example by identifying which assessors are consistently cited as having proposed or provided inappropriate treatments. “If we could have treatment plans not filled with unnecessary goods and services, we [insurers] would not have to dispute them,” he points out.