Fair Treatment May Lower Workers' Comp Costs
Respecting workers at all levels is the best way for workers' comp managers to reduce claims and costs. But some have doubts about the abilities of most companies to effectively manage workers' comp.
By Dan Reynolds
The voices were there as the best and brightest gathered at Chicago's McCormick Place to argue the merits and failings of workers' compensation management in the United States.
They were the voices of America's workers, echoing and receding as experts debated the advantages of cost-containment processes versus outcome-based management on the opening day of the National Workers' Compensation and Disability Conference & Expo, which began Tuesday and concludes today.
And what those voices seemed to be saying is that companies and organizations that honor their workers and provide meaningful channels for them to express their worries and complaints are those that are going to have the best success in reducing workers' comp claims and costs.
"The bottom line is respect, respect, respect," said Yolanda Romero, a member of a panel of five experts who had the courage to tackle the multi-thorned challenges that face the workers' compensation field.
As director of workers' compensation for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, Romero knows a little bit about thorny issues. She came to her post in 1998, right on the heels of a 40-day strike by union workers that had as one of its core issues, reform of the authority's workers' compensation program.
Key to her success in reducing SEPTA's claim reserves by $57 million in the past seven years has been her relationship with that union, a relationship she has cultivated to the point that she now has union reps calling her when they suspect an employee may be taking advantage of the authority's workers' comp system.
"I didn't want them to think of me as a hired gun coming in. I wanted them to think of me as a change agent who was going to work with them to implement the program," said Romero.
But can what has worked with SEPTA work with corporate America? There were some wizened voices at Tuesday's panel discussion that had doubts about the abilities of most companies to effectively manage workers' comp.
Panelist Dr. Jennifer Christian, the president of Webility Corp., a workers' compensation management consulting company based in Wayland, Mass., said she's clear on the impact of incompetent management on employee relations.
"It's not just that it creates bad outcomes in workers' comp, but it creates bad outcomes in safety programs, it creates bad outcomes in employee attraction and retention, and it creates bad outcomes in absenteeism and disability episodes," said Dr. Christian.
Dr. Christian's views weren't lost on the crowd.
"Employees need to know that they are cared about. They need to know what they are supposed to do, who they go to and that their health is important to you," said Crystal Witham, who is a senior consultant with CM-Services, and works at the management consulting company's Pittsfield, Maine, office.
The scary part, according to Dr. Christian, is that many companies fail in their employee management by design, as though they couldn't care less that they have unhappy employees whose misery might drive them into the arms of a workers' compensation claim through a feigned injury or a disabling psychological condition.
"After now having worked in organizations for several years, I have the sad feeling that companies are poorly managed on purpose; that the management decides to be second class rather than first class," she said. "If you think back in elementary school, some students decided to get Cs and Ds rather than As and Bs."
And who or what is there ready to grease the skids for those dim-witted CFOs and COOs?
Why, it's technology, lauded by so many as the train that will carry civilization from ignorance into enlightenment, but which was viewed by at least two of Tuesday's panelists as a bane that alienates workers and leads to more claims.
A world of automated voicemail, impersonal e-mail and remote claims adjusters had panelist James Pocius, an attorney in the Scranton, Pa., office of Marshall, Dennehey, Warner, Coleman & Goggin, going through some very public hand-wringing.
"I think we start from behind right from the beginning and that's an important thing. We're not giving service to the customer," said Pocius. He said a system that has focused too much on cost containment and not enough on health outcomes has been made even worse by a web of impersonal technology.
"There's nobody at the helm controlling it anymore," said Pocius.
This technology-mad world is also having a negative effect on costs because of the array of imaging machines that are finding injuries that in an aging population may not be connected to work injuries, according to Dr. David Cooper.
Dr. Cooper, the director of orthopedic surgery at the Knee Center in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., may have earned the loudest round of applause when he took aim at a health-care system that pays doctors regardless of how well they perform in bringing patients back to working condition.
"We see physicians get paid regardless of outcomes and that has to stop," said Dr. Cooper.
There was one weathervane of optimism in Maddy Bowling's views on what technology can bring to the debate on the effectiveness of workers' compensation management.
Bowling, a Chicago-based consultant, said technology may still hold the key to creating a healthcare and workers' comp management system that can focus on outcomes rather than processes. She said the proper use of loss data, which should be readily available to risk managers, can point the way to better outcomes.
"It is clear to me that all of the medical cost containment tools that we're using aren't working," Bowling said. "Use your data to actively analyze what impact your current cost control programs are having on your overall results."
The
16th Annual National Workers' Compensation and Disability Conference & Expo
is
produced by the conference unit of LRP Publications, publishers of Human Resource Executive
®
and Risk & Insurance
®
magazines.
November 8, 2007 Copyright 2007© LRP Publications
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