The Board of Directors has approved changes to policy in Chapter 3 of the Rehabilitation Services & Claims Manual, Volume II. These policies provide direction on the determination of whether a worker’s personal injury or death arises out of and in the course of employment. WorkSafeBC consulted extensively on draft policies, and the Board of Directors considered all the responses received from stakeholders before reaching a decision.

The result is the replacement of policy items #12.00 through #24.00 inclusively, with Items C3-12.00 through C3-23.30 and policy item #34.55. The new policies are consistent in content, formatting, and style, and remove misleading and outdated examples. They provide clearer direction on how to determine if a claim for personal injury or death will be accepted, and emphasize the importance of new Item C3-14.00, Arising Out of and In the Course of the Employment, in making this decision.

The changes were originally scheduled to come into effect January 1, 2009 to allow sufficient time for the Claims Management Solutions (“CMS”) Systems to be developed, implemented, and tested before the policy changes took effect.

Due to revisions to the CMS Systems implementation timeline, at its March 2008 meeting the Board of Directors revised the effective date for the Chapter 3 policy changes to January 1, 2010 (see BOD Decision 2008/03/19-04).

At the September 2009 meeting, the Board of Directors further postponed the effective date to July 1, 2010 to ensure that there would be sufficient resources available to successfully implement the changes (see BOD Decision 2009/09/16-04).