Knowledge for Better Health: Your Resource for Insights and Updates

A worker on an SSRI doing residential roofing in July is at a different risk profile than the worker beside him on no medication at all. Most files won't say that out loud. Most IMEs won't ask.

In British Columbia, roughly 60 people sustain a serious brain injury every day. That's about 22,000 new cases a year in BC alone, according to the BC Brain Injury Association. Stretch the lens across Western Canada and the number gets significantly bigger - more than 1.5 million Canadians are currently living with the effects of an acquired brain injury, with about 160,000 new cases each year.

You can usually feel it before anyone says it. The answers stop fitting the questions. The IME comes back useful but somehow not enough. The claimant's situation is settling into something permanent, and the file is still being managed like the picture might change next quarter.

National Nursing Week (May 12-18) is a good moment to shine a light on something that often goes unrecognized in the independent medical assessment world: the central role that nursing and clinical coordination professionals play in making IMEs work.

Mental health is now the leading cause of long-term disability in Canada. That's not a trend on the horizon - it's the reality employers are managing right now, in their workplaces, on their claims files, and in conversations with HR teams and benefit providers.

April is Stress Awareness Month - and if you work in disability, insurance, or employment law, chances are you don't need much convincing that stress is a big deal.

April 3 was Walk to Work Day - a lighthearted awareness day that carries a surprisingly serious message for anyone involved in occupational health and injury recovery.

Hearing-related injury claims can be deceptively complex.Symptoms may be subtle, testing results can vary, and functional impact isn’t always obvious on paper.

Injury and disability evaluations are often designed around standardized frameworks - but bodies, health trajectories, and recovery experiences are not one-size-fits-all.

In rare or atypical cases, the absence of clear clinical patterns can create uncertainty for everyone involved - claimants, referral partners, and decision-makers alike.