QBE Insurance and CRI team up for service delivery innovation

The management of patients recovering from a severe injury is a complex process. Often rehabilitation requires extensive interaction between the patient, healthcare specialists, allied health practitioners, and insurers.

Striving to optimise these processes and taking advantage of new innovations when they arise is a major priority for QBE. To this end, QBE has recently partnered with the Centre for Rehab Innovation (CRI) at HMRI and The University of Newcastle, to take a closer look at the models of care, including community-care based models, that are used to manage injuries acquired in the workplace or because of motor vehicle accidents.

A particular concern with workplace and motor vehicle accidents is the risk of patients developing chronic pain.

Chronic pain and its related issues are associated with billions of dollars of additional costs each year that are potentially avoidable.

CRI Clinical Pathways Theme lead and HMRI researcher, Associate Professor Michael Pollack said that chronic pain is recognised to make recovery and successful return to work challenging, as such preventing conversion of acute injury-related pain into chronic pain is of utmost importance.

“CRI will draw on its extensive expertise in the management of rehabilitation care processes to consider how to best design and implement services that support successful recovery.”

CRI Director and HMRI researcher Professor Michael Nilsson said, “We are particularly interested in early, targeted, proactive interventions in both conventional care as well as community settings. We also need to consider the individual patient holistically from a biopsychosocial perspective”.

CRI co-Director and HMRI researcher Professor Rohan Walker added “As important, as patient-centred considerations, there is a need to ensure innovations are developed in a way that they can dock seamlessly into existing care pathways.”

Rehabilitation should be provided in a coherent and adaptive format that optimally supports those recovering from injury.

QBE General Manager People Risk Claims, David Bacon said of the partnership “QBE has a deep commitment to delivering the best possible services for its customers and we seek to work with recognised leaders such as CRI to achieve this objective”.

Chris Rymer, QBE Head of Healthcare, People Risk Claims, Australia-Pacific said, “Working with CRI is very energising, we are excited with what we have co-developed and see that the innovations embedded in the project as transformative”

Professor Michael Nilsson said, “The partnership with QBE combines their industry-leading strengths with CRI’s expertise. Together we form a dynamic partnership with a focus on problem-solving and continuous improvement.

CRI is passionate about delivering impactful changes in healthcare provision and therefore we have an industry-first focus. We understand that our role is to assist our partners to tackle challenges that are important to them.”

CRI and QBE will work together across 2023 to implement a nested series of projects that will consider enhancements to current models of injury management.

Media release from the Hunter Medical Research Institute. Note: Content has been edited for style and length.

Ritchelle Drilon

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Ritchelle is a Content Producer for Healthcare Channel, Australia’s premier resource of information for healthcare.

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