2002 Annual Report

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Schedule P - Administrator's Year 2 Annual Report for the Period Ending March 31, 2002

On March 9, 2000, the Courts appointed Crawford Adjusters Canada Incorporated/ Expertises Crawford Canada Incorporée/The Garden City Group Canada to act as the Administrator of the 1986-1990 Hepatitis C Class Action Settlement. The administration of this complex class action settlement celebrated its second anniversary on March 9, 2002.

While Year One aimed at setting up this complex settlement administration, Year Two focused in part on refining processes and procedures coupled with meeting and exceeding the needs and expectations of Claimants. Year Two also included important development work in regard to compensation for loss of income/services or support; compensation for costs of care and out-of-pocket and uninsured treatment / medical expenses. As a result, we increased our claims processing resources significantly in Year Two.

Some important year to date milestones include the following:

• Hired and trained new Claims Analysts, a Communications Officer and an Appeal Coordinator and continued to develop Human Resources practices and procedures throughout Year Two.
• Developed and launched the Costs of Care compensation program in association with the VON. We are presently finalizing a “Care Plan Booklet” for Claimants.
• Completed development work and processed a record number of Loss of Income/Services or Support claims; Out-of-Pocket and Uninsured Treatment and Medical Expenses claims.
• We continued our research with respect to HCV associated medical conditions and medications for the purposes of updating the “HCV Medication List”.
• Processed all Claimant requests for a disease-level reassessment.
• Developed and programmed new sections (customer feedback tracking; costs of care; appeals and loss of income/services/support) within the customized software application known as CLASS.
• Established and implemented a claim file “archiving system” for inactive claims.
• Developed and launched the Request for Review Process (Appeals) including appointing an Appeal Coordinator, drafting template denial letters, setting up procedures with respect to conveying the claim files to Fund Counsel and the Arbitrators/Referees, at the request of Fund Counsel attending all appeal hearings held to date.
• Scanned over 316,000 pages of claims-related documents.
• Handled over 73,000 telephone calls via the 1-800 telephone assistance line.
• Updated the www.hepc8690.ca web site on a regular basis.
• Updated and revamped the Initial Claim Forms Package.
• Provided on-site personal assistance to Claimants as requested.
• Answered all requests for “data dumps” to be used for medical modeling and fund sufficiency purposes.
• Reported weekly to the Joint Committee.
• Met on a quarterly basis with the Joint Committee.

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