Important Message RICO equals Canadian Law Stop Medical Fraud! America’s Injured & Disabled Workers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT8XM2P-deg
Will the doctors that work for WCB in Alberta come clean? This doctor refused to commit fraud on the public. How many injured workers in Alberta have been denied help ,treated like garbage because the case manager would only adjudicate their claim on the chosen doctor they picked to give a personal opinion for money. How do these case managers know to pick this doctors opinion? If they have no medical knowledge why would they put them selves in a position to choose a opinion that hurts people? Are the bonus’s that good? Was this paid opinion based on medical evidence?, treating physicians?, clinical evidence? or was it a normal factitious, slandering bought opinion allowing WCB employees to deny your injury and save money by not awarding compensation?.
This women will be raked over the coals made to look like a liar disgruntled employee and so will you , if you stand up and raise your voice. Are you tired of trying to survive, keep your dignity , live in pain and poverty while being subjected to ridicule . Have these paid , false, made up, slandering, personal opinions ruined yours and those that care about you life’s ?. In some cases these personal opinions cause death sentences to the injured worker. CIWAA members are tired but refuse to give up. Please join us spread the word, sign the petition call for peaceful action.
This business is inhumane. We do not treat hurt animals like useless garbage , why is it ok for injured workers?. WCB is suppose to be no-fault insurance but when a bought opinion over rules medical evidence, treating physicians, clinical evidence (bone scans , MRI, nerve testing ) how can a injured worker and their doctors prove they are hurt? When the fault lies with the injured worker for going to work there is a problem a big problem.
It is time for these questions to be answered. If you agree with Dr. Brenda Steinnagel, blowing the whistle sign and spread the petition.
We have a great leader that cares about the people in Alberta and can and will make changes to the WCB given time. CIWWA stands beside Rachel Notley and the NDP and understands the WCB does not work and justice can not come over night . Rachel Notley is a injured workers dream come true . All of us must stand up , including the doctors of Alberta that are tired of being undermined and displaced while treating their patient.
Enjoy the article below, feel free to comment!
Fired hospital worker details struggles after losing WSIB lawsuit; Doctor who assessed Shawn McCabe claims she was pressured to alter medical opinion
Jacques Gallant
The Toronto Star, Sept. 26, 2015
An injured hospital worker who says his claim was denied by the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board – despite backup from a doctor who said she provided a medical opinion in his favor – is going public with how he struggled to earn a living after losing his job.
Shawn McCabe, a 46-year-old father of two, says he worked as a security guard at Rouge Valley Centenary hospital in Scarborough for 17 years until he was terminated in September 2014, a year after being injured on the job.
Dr. Brenda Steinnagel, a Hamilton-area physician who was working as a medical consultant to WSIB at the time, claims that she wrote a medical opinion on his case that concluded his emotional issues could be related to the head injury he sustained.
Steinnagel is alleging in a $3.2-million lawsuit, which does not name McCabe, that she was terminated last April over the case. Her suit against the WSIB and her former employer, Vaughan-based Workplace Health and Cost Solutions, claims that she was repeatedly pressured to change her opinion on the case, and that the two organizations tried to force her to participate in a “fraud upon the public.”
Steinnagel alleges she was fired after her employer provided a different opinion to the WSIB, “thereby providing WSIB with the false and fraudulent opinion it needed to deny the hospital worker his benefits,” according to her statement of claim.
None of the allegations has been proven in court, and both the WSIB and WHCS deny any wrongdoing. They have not yet filed statements of defence.
Steinnagel’s lawsuit has highlighted concerns about the WSIB’s practices that some lawyers say they have been expressing for years. “The issue that has risen to the top is that the single-minded focus of the WSIB seems to be to save costs no matter what the consequences are,” said Hilary Balmer, a paralegal who deals exclusively with injured worker cases.
She was speaking generally and is not involved in McCabe’s case.
McCabe, who says he’s actively looking for work, had been living off of employment insurance until it ran out in August. He says he’s now looking at having to cash in his pension, a decade before he planned to retire.
He described Steinnagel as brave in an interview with the Star, and said he decided to come forward after reading her story in Wednesday’s newspaper, in which he wasn’t identified. “I’m without any benefits. I’m without any care,” said McCabe, who is appealing the WSIB’s decision.
“When I got this letter saying I was turned down, I said I didn’t understand. My (WSIB) case manager told me that a third consultant had ruled against my claim and that was the end of the story.”
Shortly after being denied, he said he suffered a heart attack.
The WSIB and the hospital declined to comment on McCabe’s case.
McCabe said he suffered a number of injuries, including to his head, after trying to restrain a patient in the hospital’s psychiatric intensive care unit
on Dec. 20, 2013. He said he collided with a Toronto police officer when they both tried to bring the patient under control.
After that, McCabe said, he didn’t recognize himself. He would cry for no reason and became increasingly irritable, while still trying to do his job on
a modified work plan. “I was suffering from this profound sense of sadness,” he said.
Prior to the incident, he said, he was always able to keep his cool.
“After 17 years in the health care system and seeing the atrocities of what one human can do to another, being able to compartmentalize that and do your job in a professional manner has allowed me to keep my emotions in check,” he said.
Things came to a head by fall 2014, McCabe said, when he got into what he described as a shouting match with a manager. He said he was suspended with pay, and ultimately terminated.
“This is totally out of character for me,” he said. “You have no idea the months that I spent asking my wife, asking other people: Am I violent? Do you
perceive me as violent, as threatening? Because God knows I don’t want to be that person. I want to get help.”
He said he notified the WSIB of the incident and losing his job. He said his claim file was sent to one medical consultant, and then to Dr. Steinnagel for a second review in late 2014. (He said he only learned that she had concluded his mental health issues could be related to his injury after his lawyer received the file from the WSIB this year.)
An ex-employee of WHCS, Steinnagel’s former employer, said Steinnagel was the busiest consultant at WHCS, closing 40 files a week on time.
The employee, who has also worked at WSIB and asked to remain anonymous because she still has a professional relationship with the agency, alleged that Steinnagel was not the first consultant to lose her job at the request of the WSIB.
The company also previously removed from its roster an independent contractor, who had apparently had a confrontation on the phone with a WSIB physician over a medical opinion, the employee claimed.
“I cannot comment because we have no knowledge of any of this,” said WHCS lawyer, Greg McGinnis.
“To me, it’s really wrong what they did to Brenda,” the employee told the Star. “The only person besides Brenda who got screwed out of this is the worker.”
