ICBC ACTIVE REHAB
Recover from your car accident with our ICBC active rehab approach. We will prescribe and guide you through individually tailored therapeutic exercises so that you can return to life before your accident safely and swiftly.Serving Vancouver and Port Coquitlam
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What is covered by ICBC when I get in a car accident?
When you get in a car accident, ICBC will help you in all your medical care. So in our regards, what we’re gonna look after is your physiotherapy, but in particular with the active rehab model is the kinesiologist who will be part of your care team that’s going to work in getting you back to activity, getting you moving and not just lying on a table, like you might find in some of the other clinical environments.
How many sessions do I get?
With a typical ICBC claim, as soon as you’ve got your claim number, you can come to see us and we will be able to do an initial assessment with you from the kinesiology component of it, but we’re also going to be able to get 12 sessions to start you off, without anything extra, as long as it’s within that first three months of the accident occurring. From there, there’s a good chance that we’ll be able to increase your sessions as needed with extension reports.
How do I know how much treatment I’ll need?
In terms of figuring out how much treatment you’ll need, it will be varying depending on what the severity of the injury is, or even potentially how long from the initial incident, but with active rehab, it’s a model where we’re really going to look at trying to get you moving if you haven’t been moving, getting you back to activities that you want to be getting back to, and using those as a gauge for, “Hey, do I need to get back to work? Well, how close am I to getting back? Can I do the job requirements? Can I do my leisure activity requirements? If it’s a sport or if it’s another activity around the house, can I get those things done?”
So as we go through each stage and set some goals, we’ll be able to have a sense of what you want to do in the next month, two months. It may take longer, but ultimately if we can target those little goals and give you a sense of progression, that’s going to help us figure out how long things will take.
Why should I get active rehab with a kinesiologist after a car accident?
So as opposed to physiotherapy or traditional physiotherapy, where a lot of the treatment is done on the table and you might be given some small home exercise plan, the main thing for us in kinesiology and the active rehab model, and that ICBC has been really good at setting up is that we get to work with you for up to an hour for each session one-on-one and our model is going to be able to increase your activity levels as opposed to just being treated per se.
So a lot of this is going to come down to, “Hey, I want to get better. Well, what can I do to get better?” We’re going to help you with some of those tools and get you exercising. Even if you haven’t been someone who’s regularly attended the gym or anything else, we’re going to help you learn a little bit more about how to move or how to move better. So you might get some extra benefits out of the active rehab model. When we start to adjust or affect positively some of the movement patterns you already have and help to address some of the injuries or management techniques, to how do we improve our movement so that the area doesn’t hurt or how can we move this joint better than you could after the accident.
Isn’t seeing a physio good enough?
In many cases, physiotherapy by itself is more of a passive modality where there is a lot of treatment too. And so the model of utilizing a kinesiologist and the active rehab programming is really in an effort to work alongside that, whether it’s RMT, physio, etc, where it is a bit more passive than when we go to this next stage. It’s “Hey, I’m going to get you moving at the same time as you’re getting some of the care and treatment that you can get in some of the other disiplines.” And we’re going to say by using the two together as a team approach, we’re much more likely to get an efficient result for you. When you get back to activity faster and you’re going to notice that, if you get a couple sessions a week of kinesiology and another several sessions of physio or RMT, or another model that we’re going to end up seeing a really quick and efficient progression, whereas another environments where you’re kind of sitting and waiting for results to happen, this is a bit more of an active approach. And this is an active approach from your end, not just from our end as well.
After my car accident, how long should I wait before I start active rehab?
Active rehab can potentially start right away. Ultimately it might take a little bit of time to go through the process of being reviewed by a physiotherapist who will determine if you’re ready to start strengthening and working on some of these pretty seriously injured areas. But at the same time, if it’s really low impact, getting some movement through joints then we can start pretty much right away, even if it’s not to the intensity levels that we want to see further down the road.
What does active rehab involve, what can I expect?
An active rehab session is going to surround a lot more movement. So we’re going to work on how we move. So a lot of biomechanics and that’s the idea of human movement and how we actually move well.
We’ll address stability and balance control. It can be more along those lines of the activity you want to get back to. So if we’re looking at a sporting activity, where you need to be able to run again, we’ll look at the issue of how your core is supporting your back, because that’s where your real pain is.
If we’re running, maybe we can adjust how your running form is. So we get less loading on your back. It’s really going to incorporate a lot of the activities of daily life. Focusing on targets and goals that you’ve set for yourself with us. And then we’re going to be able to work around saying, you know what, we’re going to get that part moving or this part strengthened, or maybe we need to do some mobility work to get that joint moving in a better way. You’re not going to be sitting on a table for much, if any time, other than maybe an initial assessment. But after that, it’s really about time to work on yourself with our support.
Does everyone need active rehab and how do I know if I need it?
It won’t necessarily be everyone who needs active rehab, but ultimately pretty much anyone can benefit from active rehab.
Our outcomes and goals can be achieved much faster with it and depending on the type of clinicians and physiotherapists that you’ve worked with in the past or are currently working with, the idea is that we can potentially work with a multidisciplinary team and say, this is going to be an approach, which is going to get you to your goals faster.
Even if it isn’t something that’s a serious injury or you haven’t lost a whole lot of strength or even you feel like you can move pretty well, the benefits can be seen from how stable your core is so that we know that you’re less likely to get injured in a subsequent accident or if your neck feels okay, but you’re actually stronger through your shoulders. Those are pieces that we can address early so that we’re not going to be worried about it down the road and you can feel a bit more confident about getting back to activity.
How long should I expect my recovery to take?
Your recovery can take a variety of durations, but what we’re hoping with in an active rehab plan and working with a multidisciplinary team, hopefully that recovery starts to be a bit more efficient, a little bit shorter in duration, but varying degrees, obviously based on the initial injury and how long it was before you were able to start the active rehab programming.
Ultimately even if you’re concerned about getting back to work or activities sooner than later. It might be something you can get back to, but we’re get you resources and tools to take along with you and you can continue to work with us as you get back to your normal levels.
We might not be back to 100% right away, but if we have that as a target, there’s a lot of steps along the way. We can hit these targets and goals and say, you know what? Now I’m able to get back to some of my work, or now I’m able to get back to all my work. What are my duties and roles at work so that we can plan out the pieces that we still need to work on after, after the first few sessions and then what’s next and continue.
Why should I go to Westcoast SCI versus somewhere else after I found my car accident?
The model at Westcoast SCI is one where we want to keep people moving. Whether you’ve been with our physiotherapists and are progressing on to our kinesiologist and active rehab, it’s a model where we can work together, utilizing the team as a whole, to be able to progress your ultimate recovery and rehab after a car accident. All of our sessions are one-on-one, you’re not going to be seeing a group session with one kinesiologist looking after three or four patients and ultimately the sessions that you’re gonna get are longer and more effective than if you were coming in for only a couple minutes or only seeing someone for a couple of minutes at a time. You should end up with plans to be able to take away and work on in your own time at the gym, but we’re going to be there on hand to help answer those questions, keep passing things back and forth between our clinicians and put you in a space where you really have that opportunity to progress in an efficient manner.