Disability management – successful pilot of online questionnaire now complete

September 10, 2024

Read time: 2 minutes

Our personalized case management approach ensures that we assess plan members quickly, with the right resources identified as soon as possible. We’re continuously reviewing and refining our approach to develop new tools that can help improve plan member health. In 2022, we began piloting a psychosocial questionnaire online for select disability claims. Here’s the pilot announcement we sent back then.

Our goal for the pilot was twofold:

For mental health-related short-term disability (STD) claims we wanted to:

  • understand the influencing factors that impact claim durations, and
  • help plan members return to work faster and healthier.

For long duration disability claims, we wanted to:

  • use specific criteria to identify plan members who may have an opportunity to return to full-time or part-time employment.
  • improve the information exchange process by digitizing the Plan Member Update (PMU) form. We send the PMU form to plan members on long duration claims annually to capture changes in health, function, and income.

The pilot is now complete and has yielded positive results. As a result, we’re now rolling out the questionnaire more widely. In addition, as shared in the Digital disability at work flyer, the transition to the digital PMU has shown great progress. As of June 2024, 80% of plan members who received the questionnaire submitted it within 6 days.

The present flyer provides an overview of our STD claims pilot results, details about the psychosocial questionnaire, and the benefits it provides to your Clients and their plan members.

Innovation yields results

We’re committed to delivering the right early-stage health solutions for your Clients’ plan members most at risk. Our online psychosocial questionnaire is making a difference and is a new innovation in our disability management toolkit. It’s another way we help get plan members back to health and work faster, lowering disability claims costs.

We’re sharing this news with Clients through this Focus Update on September 12, 2024.

Questions?

Please contact your Sun Life Group Benefits representative.