Physician of the Month October 2012

William Christensen, MD

By: Cynthia Clipper-Gray

As Medical Director of the EMC Occupational Health program, Dr. Christensen works tirelessly to see that our employees are treated with respect, care, and compassion.  His wealth of knowledge and expertise in Occ Med assures that our employees have access to the latest in occupational medicine towards achieving a quick recovery and return to work.  He has worked closely with our team in the past year to integrate several improvements to the process management of the injured worker.  His dedication to his craft and staying informed on the latest trends in Occupational Medicine is evidenced in our ability to have achieved best practice in reduction of severity of claims and claims cost per $100 of payroll for FY 2011 and FY 2012! 

In this past year, Dr. Christensen has led the charge for better and faster determination of injury causation and work relatedness.  This affords faster triage to diagnostics assessments/testing and therapy allowing injured workers to return to work sooner.  He has been instrumental in integrating the Job Function Match program which has resulted in the lowest levels in lost time from work in more than six years; to achieving another best practice benchmark of no lost time payments in 4th Qtr 2012. 

Dr. Christensen works diligently to ensure that our employees understand the nature of their injury while reinforcing the realistic expectation of a speedy recovery, as appropriate.  Establishing an association with well-being and not disability is one of the canons of Occupational Medicine that he employs towards continually reducing number of days to determining Maximum Medical Improvement and successful claim closure.  Expedient claims closures resulted in a 40% decrease in new worker’s compensation claims cost for fiscal year FY11; a trend that continued thru FY12.  

Dr. Christensen is a delight to work with personally.  He is always willing to share his vast knowledge and experience towards improving the teams understanding medical management in the work comp arena towards overall case management.  Even after a long day of patients, he responds to request for orders, referrals, or injured worker requests with expediency; he balances compassion and caring while maintaining the objectivity required in occupational medicine.  As one of a dwindling number of Board Certified Occupational Health Physicians, we are very fortunate to have him as Medical Director of our Occupational Health/Worker’s Compensation program.