Measurement Outcomes in Workers’ Compensation Risk Management

Collecting data and understanding outcomes is critical to a successful and effective risk management program. This session at WCI’s 2019 Workers’ Compensation Educational Conference showed risk managers how to weed through the endless data points to obtain effective, manageable and useful analysis.

Speakers included:

• Tara Acton, CPCU, ACI, AID, Director of Claims & Counsel, CenturyLink
• Susan Emerson, General Manager for Workers’ Compensation Disability and Leave Programs, Delta Airlines, Inc.
• Michele Adams, Vice President of Risk Management Services, Walt Disney World Resorts (Moderator)

How do you manage priorities and expectations around data?

CenturyLink’s data goes to operations to help them understand how much money they were spending related to their actions. They also provide reports to our safety division and higher-level reports for the finance department. Each of these groups is interested in different data sets, so they started with drafts and had various departments tell Risk Management what they wanted to see on their particular reports.

Delta implemented dashboards that go to operations to show the real costs. Eyes started to open. It was difficult to communicate workers’ compensation rules and regulations to company stakeholders that do not work in the workers’ comp space. They have to do a lot of explaining.

Disney has a dedicated insight support team that manages reporting. Common understanding can be quite challenging because people that work in operations or entertainment, for instance, find it hard to understand the data. They created an OSHA log so managers can see reported incidents and began using common language.

How do you track and communicate restrictions management?

CenturyLink gives 180 days for transitional duty, therefore, they have to be good at tracking days. That is primarily the only thing they track in this area.

Delta’s leaves are managed by their TPA and their return-to-work data is tracked in this analysis. They have found that the ROI is hard to prove on return-to-work programs. They are working to put together refined reports to prove effectiveness on things like transitional duty.

Disney has a robust return-to-work program. They track the reasons why injured workers cannot perform certain transitional duties. They have a variety of jobs, so they feel they should be able to accommodate somehow. There are several unions working at Disney, which adds another level of complexity.

How do you look at medical outcomes?

CenturyLink looks for the best doctors they can find. They try to influence injured employees to talk to nurse case managers as soon as possible that then drive them to a highly-scored doctors.

Delta worked with their TPA to match employees with in-network doctors in close radius to their home. They also focused on finding doctors who are experienced in treating occupational injuries, which is not expertise that every doctor necessarily has.

Disney has a direct medical network. They do not contract. They are very focused on medical outcomes. They have quality assurance meetings with the medical team and claims team. They have an on-site clinic as well, which has helped influence outcomes.