Those who deal with claims daily sometimes forget that a claim can be a scary experience for an injured employee. This panel at PRIMA’s 2015 Annual Conference explored ways to make claims a less stressful experience for entity employees. The panel included: Kimberly George, Senior Vice President at Sedgwick Claims Management Services, Inc. Sarah Perry, ARM-P, Risk Manager for the City of Columbia Mark Walls, VP Communications & Strategic Analysis at Safety National To better manage your workers’ compensation program, it’s important to consider every element impacting your injured employees. The best place to start is by simply viewing them
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Preparing your program for submission to carriers requires you to emphasize your strengths and address your weaknesses. This cram session at PRIMA’s 2015 Annual Conference provided tips on how to present your program in the best possible way. Moderator: Susan Blakenburg, Area Senior Vice President at Gallagher Public Sector Speaker:  David Randall, CPCU, ARM, Public Entity Underwriting Manager at Safety National The underwriter is the deciding factor when risk managers buy insurance, so it behooves risk managers to do everything they can to get underwriters to look favorably at their risk. Underwriters make decisions by evaluating if your company is
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This session at PRIMA 2015 covered how to identify the concepts of measuring return on investment (ROI) and how to evaluate calculated returns. The session was presented by Ariel Jenkins, CSP, ARM, MBA, ARM-E, Director – Risk Control at Safety National. In risk control, the motto “No news is good news” comes to mind. Many risk professionals think they must be doing their jobs effectively if their employees are not reporting any injuries. Safety professionals want to increase their net income, support productivity, reduce risks and create potential to generate economic value. Return on investment is the gain from initial
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Learning the differences in communication preferences that vary between Baby Boomers, Generation X and Millennials can help you manage these generations more effectively. This session at PRIMA’s 2015 Annual Conference explored generational differences and how to best communicate to each of them. Moderator:  Sean Schaefer, Assistant Vice President at Genesis Speaker:  Candy Whirley, Owner of SBG Services, LLC The current generations in the professional workforce are broken down into Baby Boomers (born 1946 – 1964), Generation X (born 1965 – 1980) and Millennials (born 1981 – 2000). Effective communication occurs through the following five stages: 1. Awareness Boomers – Discuss
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The 2015 PRIMA Annual Conference will take place June 7-10, at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, and will bring together thought leaders in the public risk management field who will share their experience and solutions to some of risk management’s toughest problems. Conference Chronicles will be blogging from sessions at the event.  Managing risk in our cities, counties, schools, states and tribal nations presents unique challenges and PRIMA’s Annual Conference is the only conference dedicated to public sector risk management professionals. Join nearly 1,000 public risk management colleagues, leaders and experts for an exceptional learning and networking
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At the 2015 National Council of Self-Insurers Annual Meeting, Safeway discussed their claims early intervention program. The presenters were Anita Weir, Director of Medical & Disability Management and Denise Gillen-Algire, Director of Managed Care & Disability. Understanding the Dynamics of Delayed Recovery: A small number of claims drives a large percentage of the costs. Clinically simple or routine claims are seeing increasing medical and indemnity costs due to poor recovery. Some people develop persistent pain and delayed recovery due to non-medical psycho-social risk factors (poor coping skills). Medical diagnosis legitimizes injured workers’ sense of distress (i.e. I have a disc
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At the 2015 National Council of Self-Insurers Annual Conference, Natasha Moore from NCCI discussed the effectiveness of medical fee schedules and other cost containment measures that states have recently implemented. Characteristics of a well-defined fee schedule include: Specific maximum reimbursement rates for procedures instead of reimbursement based on a percentage of billed charges. Being comprehensive so that medical providers do not shift treatments to areas not covered by the fee schedule. If the fee schedule is set too high, it becomes a target for billing and can actually increase payments. This happened when Illinois implemented their fee schedule. If the
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At the National Council of Self-Insurers Annual Meeting, Dr. Robert Barth presented a session discussing some medical management issues that can have a significant impact on the well being of injured workers and also save employers money. Dr. Barth’s main hypotheses were: Non-work-related factors are driving the overwhelming majority of workers’ compensation costs. Workers’ compensation is inappropriately forcing an injury model on issues that are NOT actually injury-related. Workers’ compensation encourages excessive and non-credible treatment. Workers’ compensation encourages withdrawal from work. Workers’ compensation is actually harmful to the health of workers. His suggested solutions: Do not accept claims as compensable
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At the 2015 National Council of Self-Insurers Conference, Michael Caldarazzo from PhotoFax.net presented a session on the use of tactical remote surveillance technology in workers’ compensation. The Surveillance Vehicle: The vehicle must “blend” Vehicle should not be a car. Once on site, you cannot break position (bathroom, food, etc.) You never want to do “up-front surveillance” – in other words, from the front of the vehicle. You don’t want people to see you filming. The vehicle must have ample electrical power so it doesn’t need to run because that would draw attention to it. There must be silent heat and
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At the 2015 National Council of Self-Insurers Conference, Robert Minor from Vorys, Sater, Seymour & Pease presented a session discussing the federal government’s intrusion into state workers’ compensation issues. The first federal intrusion into workers’ compensation issues started with the Mine Safety Act in 1968. Shortly thereafter, in 1970, the federal government established OSHA to develop health and safety standards for employers nationwide. In 1972, there was a federal  study on the current status of state workers’ compensation systems. This pointed out several shortfalls in the state systems. At that time, some were pushing for minimum federal standards for state
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