By Pamela Cowan, The Leader-PostOctober 4, 2010
Front page of the Business Section

Besides the human costs of pain and suffering, Gord Moker says there’s a business case for preventing unintentional injuries, which drain $1 billion from Saskatchewan’s economy every year.

“When we look at the state of unintentional injuries in our province, we’re at epidemic proportions — there’s no doubt about it,” said Moker, CEO of Safe Saskatchewan.

Speaking to delegates attending the Brain Injury Association of Canada’s conference in Regina last week, Moker presented “The Business Case for Injury Prevention.”

He referred to the SMARTRISK Economic Burden of Unintentional Injury in Saskatchewan report, which cites $595 million as the annual cost of preventable injuries to the provincial economy in 1998.

When this amount is indexed to today’s dollar value and when workers’ compensation, auto and other private disability insurer costs are added, $1 billion a year is a conservative estimate of the annual cost of preventable injuries, Moker said.

He noted that in a typical day in Saskatchewan, 435 people are injured.

“Of those, 26 people will end up in the hospital, 10 people will suffer permanent disabilities and one person will die,” Moker said. “Our injury rates overall are the highest in Canada. Our injury hospitalization rate in Saskatchewan is twice the national average and our death rate due to preventable injuries in Saskatchewan is 1.4 times the national average.”

He emphasized there’s no such thing as an accident.

“By definition, an accident is an act of fate,” he said. “Our belief is that injuries are predictable and preventable.”

Of the 160,000 Saskatchewan residents injured yearly, 35,000 incidents occur in the workplace. The rest happen outside of work hours.

“When you hear about a car crash on the Ring Road, we accept that as a normal part of life in Saskatchewan, but we have to stop doing that,” he said. “We have to transform our culture to the point where safety is held as a core value and where we work together so injuries are the exception, not the rule.”

Off-the-job injuries are eight times more costly than work injuries, he said.

Moker believes that’s primarily because workplaces have numerous resources including WCB, Occupational Health and Safety committees, medical professionals, employees and employers who work together to prevent injuries and to mitigate the loss through return-to-work programs.

He said the potential direct and indirect costs of one serious workplace injury range from $1 million to $1.25 million.

Direct costs, which are paid for by the Workers’ Compensation Board (WCB), include medical expenses, wage loss replacement, long-term earnings replacement and vocational rehabilitation.

“The direct cost that I saw from WCB records was $250,000 and it’s estimated that for every $1 in direct costs, there are between $4 and $11 in indirect costs, he said.

Indirect costs include overtime paid to employees who assume an injured person’s duties or, in dire cases, the cost a company pays to replace an employee.

“You have to screen and advertise for the position and then you have to train them,” Moker said. “It takes a year at least, regardless of the position in the organization, so they’re trained to the point where they feel comfortable in their new role. There could be damage to equipment at the time of the injury, there’s injury investigation costs and administration.”

Mosaic Potash estimates the financial impact of disability at $1,230 a day.

“One of our founding partners, Mosaic Potash, has a study that indicates that the number of days employees lost due to injuries away from work was 60 times greater than the number of days lost to workplace injuries,” Moker said. “This particular study was done over a 12-month period and the cost to Mosaic Potash was upwards to $7.5 million.”

Moker is calling for a more holistic view of injury prevention — one that extends beyond the workplace — and involves non-traditional partnerships with industry.

“Industry can engage in injury prevention for the sake of their employees and the community and also further support the existing initiatives that are happening in the community,” he said. “We’ve started into the strategic planning process with the Ministry of Education to get safety education resources and supports into the K to Grade 12 system. Our industry partners have said to us, ‘This is where we need to help. Once that strategy is developed, you tell us how we can help and we’ll be there.’ ”
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