Contact your WorkSafeBC Entitlement officer or Case Manager.
As you may be aware, the costs of administering the Workers Compensation Act is entirely funded by the employers of BC. The Act and WorkSafeBC policies set out rules for how much each employer is required to pay to fund this system. There are a number of different factors that impact how much a particular employer may pay, but the overall costs are simply a reflection of the costs of administering the Act.
One of the factors that can impact how much a particular employer may pay is the employer’s experience rating. Policy item #115.30 states that, as a general rule, all acceptable claims coded to a particular employer are counted for experience rating purposes, and that it makes no difference whether the injury was or was not the employer’s fault. WorkSafeBC policies are available to the public here.
The policy sets out a list of 11 types of claims costs which are excluded from consideration. The situation where a worker’s recovery may be delayed because the potential impact of COVID-19 on the availability of medical/treatment providers does not fall within those 11 types of claims costs that can excluded.
The rate at which an employer pays for coverage is dictated by many factors, the costs of claims for a particular employer is only one of those factors. For claims costs to impact a particular employer, though, the costs would need to be higher than those of other employer’s in the same rate class. Assuming that COVID-19 has the type of impact the employer is suggesting, for it to impact the employer, it would need to cause only their claims costs to increase, not any of the other employers in the same rate class. So, it’s not entirely clear that such a situation would have any impact on the employer’s assessment rates, in any event.
If the employer believes that cost relief should be considered on a particular claim, the employer should raise that issue with the claim owner of that claim for them to consider, based on the circumstances of that particular situation.