Canadian Occupational Safety

24 www.thesafetymag.com/ca F E A T U R E and wellness issues, with reported rises in anxiety, depression, stress and substance use in many areas. So, whether businesses are planning a full-scale return to work following COVID-19 or shifting toward virtual environments, they need to be aware that mental health needs will not be going away, and additional resources will be required to support employees and limit health-related absenteeism, health-care spending and impacts of productivity," said Sean Baldry, product marketing manager at Cority Analytics, during the tech roundtable. "Mental health is a big part of whole-person health. I believe that Canadians will come out of the pandemic much more aware that we should take care of our mental health much more deliberately and that employers will support that," said Dr. Dorian Lo, president of Express Scripts Canada, to COS last September. Although many services are closed or limited due to physical distancing guidelines, there is still an immediate need to provide access to continued care. Telemedicine can help provide easier access to health-care services — especially during this pandemic, where access to health care may be more difficult. As noted above, access to mental health care has never been more important. "We've seen a tremendous increase in the need to access mental health support in the last few months," says Dr. Marc Robin, medical director at Dialogue. "We have actually more than doubled our network of mental health care professionals to address the increased demand," he says. In terms of demographics, 20- to 30-year-old individuals are two times more likely to seek out mental health services than any others in his practice, says Robin. In addition, males and females are equally requesting access to care. Case study: Dialogue The pandemic has affected a number of businesses in both a positive and a negative way. For virtual health-care provider Dialogue, the pandemic has accelerated its growth. "Twenty-twenty was a great accelerator for telemedicine … We've increased the number of members we serve by a factor of 10 since the start of COVID," says Robin. He says he sees between 1,000 and 1,500 people every day on Dialogue's platform. It has around 1,000 employers who buy services from it directly and another 25,000 through other organizations. This means that millions of Canadians and their families have access to virtual care. And this is just for Dialogue. There are several online health providers in the country and so one can imagine that there are millions more Canadians who have access to telemedicine. That is a huge number of people who have switched over, either by necessity or because they are interested in the benefits that telehealth services can bring. Wait times for appointments can be long, especially for same-day appointments. Wait times in emergency rooms can also be long, especially given the current COVID-19 situation, where clinics and hospitals are overwhelmed with patients. According to Robin and Dialogue's internal data, using their telehealth platform saves around 4.2 hours of waiting. This is an advantage for employers and could potentially help reduce absenteeism at work (if, for example, a worker has an appointment during normal work hours, this would save time for the worker and the employer). Looking at the case of Dialogue, we can see that COVID-19 has certainly impacted the evolution of telemedicine and has highlighted a number of advantages that it may present, especially for those suffering with mental health issues. The benefits of telehealth Although it certainly appeals to one's practical sense, the main question, of course, is whether telehealth services, especially for mental health, are even effective. Robin seems to think so. "We conducted a study on our model of addressing mental health complaints for Canadian workers and it is documented that you can do good work for mental health through virtual encounters," he says. And the practicality of the service may well play a part in why it is effective. "In mental health, we know that 50 per cent of people who have a problem will not consult [for] their problem," "Whether businesses are planning a full- scale return to work following COVID-19 or shifting toward virtual environments, they need to be aware that mental health needs will not be going away." Sean Baldry, Cority Analytics

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