Workers’ compensation is supposed to be a safety net. You get hurt, you report it, and the system helps you heal and return to work. That’s the theory. The reality is more like riding a carousel you never asked to get on—endless circles, new faces, dizzying disorientation, and no way to get off.
At the center of this ride is one of the least-discussed but most destructive features of the WCB system: the revolving door of case managers.
Every Time You Blink, There’s a New Sheriff in Town
When you file a claim, you’re assigned a case manager. They’re supposed to be your main point of contact, your guide through the maze. You share your injury story, your medical reports, your fears about paying the mortgage, your doctor’s warnings, your physiotherapist’s frustrations. In time, a fragile rapport develops.
Then, without warning, you get the call. “Your file has been reassigned.”
No explanation. No context. Just a matter-of-fact notification that someone new will now be handling your future. If you’re lucky, you might hear a vague line about “workload balance” or “staff transition,” but most of the time there is nothing at all. Whatever understandings you had, whatever assurances you were given, whatever momentum had been built are suddenly gone.
And just like that, you start from scratch, reliving the accident, rehashing your limitations, and re-explaining what has already been said a dozen times.
The Human Cost of the Revolving Door
It’s jarring for workers to be shufled from one case owner to the next. The relationship between a case
manager and a worker isn’t just clerical, it’s the backbone of any meaningful return-to-work outcome. It takes time to build trust, establish rapport, and reach a point where the worker feels heard and understood. That fragile relationship is critical. And yet, just as it begins to take hold, it’s dashed by the next transfer.
Each change forces the worker back to square one. They must re-tell their injury story, re-litigate their limitations, and re-explain the nuances of their treatment plan to a complete stranger. It’s emotionally exhausting and psychologically damaging. But even more than that, it’s operationally destructive. Every hand- off means vital context is lost, critical details are missed, and promises made in good faith slip away in translation.
The reality is that incoming case managers rarely have the time (or the bandwidth) to conduct a full, line-by- line review of the claim file. Their existing caseloads don’t allow for it. Instead, they skim summaries, glance at the most recent medical notes, and rely on internal shorthand. The nuances i.e., the informal commitments, the subtle medical warnings, the real-world constraints of the worker’s situation, don’t survive the shufle. And so the worker pays the price, with lost benefits, delayed treatment, and yet another setback in their recovery journey.
Continuity of Care: Broken by Design
Workers’ comp claims aren’t just numbers in a file — they’re layered, human stories. A fall on the job doesn’t just break bones; it unravels routines, strains marriages, and empties bank accounts. Case managers who stick with a file long enough can sometimes grasp that bigger picture. They notice when a worker’s tone shifts from hopeful to defeated. They catch the subtle signs that a worker is being pushed too fast, too hard, back into duties they can’t handle.
But when a file is constantly passed around, that continuity evaporates. Each new case manager only skims the “highlights,” leans on internal notes, and rarely reads the full history. Nuances vanish. Context disappears. The worker becomes reduced to bullet points on a screen.
And here’s the hardest truth: this isn’t a rare mishap. It’s built into the way the system operates. High caseloads, frequent reshufling, staff burnout, and a lack of accountability make turnover a structural feature, not an exception. The design of the system all but guarantees that when case managers change, continuity and trust are the first casualties.
It isn’t conspiracy. It’s bureaucracy. And while it may not be malicious, it is broken by design.
Oversights, Omissions, and the Disappearing Promises
Every transfer is an opportunity for oversight. That surgeon’s note warning against heavy lifting? Lost in the shufle. The psychologist’s caution about delayed onset PTSD? Buried under “miscellaneous” attachments. The informal promise made during a phone call to cover another six weeks of physio? Not worth the paper it wasn’t written on.
To the worker, these aren’t “clerical details.” They’re lifelines. And when those lifelines snap, workers are left scrambling to prove, once again, what was already proven.
That’s the cruelest part of the carousel: nothing is bankable. Not approvals. Not plans. Not commitments.
Every new case manager resets the clock. Yesterday’s yes can become tomorrow’s maybe—or worse, a flat no.
The Psychological Toll: Living in Groundhog Day
Imagine explaining your story to five different strangers over the course of a year. Each time, you start from square one. Each time, you relive the accident, the surgeries, the sleepless nights, the way your kids see you differently now.
By the third or fourth retelling, trust evaporates. Workers stop believing anything they’re told. They grow cynical, defensive, exhausted. They wonder if this isn’t incompetence at all but indifference: a system too bogged down in churn to care.
The carousel doesn’t just waste time. It grinds people down.
Why the Carousel Spins
The root cause isn’t mysterious. Case managers burn out. The job is brutal: high caseloads, constant conflict, pressure from supervisors to cut costs, and daily exposure to trauma stories. Many leave the role altogether, others move to different departments, and some are shufled simply to “balance workloads.”
WCB treats this churn as a harmless staffing issue. But for workers, it’s not harmless, but potentially catastrophic. You wouldn’t accept your surgeon being swapped mid-operation. You wouldn’t let your lawyer hand off your trial halfway through. Yet in workers’ comp, your entire future can be tossed around like a hot potato.
The Worker’s Reality: A Game of Musical Chairs
On the ground, the carousel looks like this:
- Missed wage-loss payments because the new case manager didn’t know about the approved extension.
- Treatment disruptions because the paperwork authorizing physio or counseling never made it across desks.
- Contradictory decisions because each case manager interprets policies differently.
- Endless delays because every new manager “needs time to review the file.”
For injured workers, this isn’t an administrative inconvenience—it’s survival. It’s groceries. Rent. Dignity.
What Needs to Change
If WCB were serious about supporting injured workers, they’d start with stability:
- Case ownership: Once a case manager is assigned, they remain unless the worker requests a change.
- Continuity protocols: Transitions must include detailed handovers, signed off by both outgoing and incoming managers, with the worker copied in.
- Binding commitments: Promises made by one case manager should bind the next—no resets, no take- backs.
- Transparency: Workers should be told why a change is happening, not just that it has. Until then, the carousel will keep spinning, and workers will keep paying the price.
Final Word
Injured workers don’t need perfection. They don’t even expect miracles. But they do expect consistency. When you’re injured and vulnerable, you shouldn’t have to explain your story over and over again just because someone shufled the deck.
The carousel of case managers is more than bureaucratic dysfunction, it’s a systemic flaw, broken by design. And until it stops, the promise of workers’ compensation will remain just that: a mere promise.