Tristan was injured at work and suffered a severe stroke which left him with significant cognitive and communicative impairments. As a result of this injury, he was granted a 100% permanent functional impairment award from the WorkSafeBC. Tristan’s wife managed the ongoing aspects of his claim but when she died, contact with WorkSafeBC ceased for over five years. During this time, WorkSafeBC’s efforts to reach out to Tristan consisted of two unanswered phone calls. Several years later, WorkSafeBC successfully re-established contact with Tristan and scheduled a home visit. It was during this home visit that WorkSafeBC learned of his wife’s death.

We investigated a number of issues that arose between Tristan and WorkSafeBC and determined that WorkSafeBC had acted reasonably. However, we became concerned about WorkSafeBC’s lack of outreach to Tristan, especially given the nature of injury,
and his potential eligibility for benefits that he might not have been aware of.

In regard to the lack of outreach, we determined that WorkSafeBC has a Special Care Services department which manages claims involving severely injured workers who require additional supports. However, older claims, such as Tristan’s, were not automatically
referred to this department. Instead, individual case managers were given the discretion to refer those claims or to retain them. In Tristan’s case, his file had been retained by his local WorkSafeBC office until 2019 before it was transferred to Special Care Services. WorkSafeBC could not explain to us why Tristan’s file was not transferred earlier.

Concerned that there might be other workers whose files had yet to be transferred, we asked WorkSafeBC to conduct a review to identify other workers in similar situations. WorkSafeBC agreed to the review and identified twelve additional severely injured workers whose files had yet to be transferred.

We also investigated whether Tristan was eligible for other benefits and found that he was eligible for an Independence and Home Maintenance Allowance benefit. Tristan should have been receiving this benefit when he was found to be permanently injured several
years earlier. As a result, Tristan received $52,000 in retroactive benefits from WorkSafeBC.