When workplace accidents happen, help your clients navigate the workers compensation system and reduce work comp costs with these five tips.
QUARTERLY REVIEWS
Employers know to expect injuries on the job, but they hate dealing with compliance burden related to workplace injuries. The severity of the injury impacts how long before the employee can be medically cleared to return to work, if they return at all.
Naturally, many injured and perhaps aggrieved workers will hire an attorney to help them navigate the claim and search for higher payouts. A litigated claim can significantly prolong the process and increase costs.
Conducting quarterly reviews of all worker’s compensation claims ensures that there is a constant stream of communication between the claims examiner, employee, and the physician involved in treating the injured worker. By giving everyone continuous updates on the status of the injury and treatment, you help maintain transparency and trust. Ultimately, this means you can help close claims sooner.
KEY TIPS –
- Look for small med only claims that could have been handled by nurse triage
- Look for small medical + Indemnity claims where they didn’t need to be off work
- Review large claims to make sure they don’t happen again
- Review Claims reserves on open claims and get narrative of claim for carrier pushback.
Within our software at Mod Advisor, we have resource that can help communicate or provide a solution to these cost saving tips. Here are some resources related to quarterly reviews:
- Work Comp Claim Review: Quarterly Agenda
- Workers Compensation Claim Trends
- Return to Work Program
- Medical Only VS Medical and Indemnity Claims
- Any of our Risk Reports (use these after you have defined injury trends)
IMPLEMENT NURSE TRIAGE
Most claims can be resolved without a trip to the emergency room or urgent care clinic. Your clients shouldn’t be responsible for determining when an injured worker should seek treatment. Instead transfer that responsibility to a reliable nurse triage center who can help with initial claims management.
If a claim can be resolved without a trip to the emergency room, than that company will not incur a paid claim and can prevent the claim from costing in additional premium to reduce work comp costs.
Mod Advisor Related Documents:
- Nurse Triage Hotline Flyer
- What is Nurse Triage
COMMUNICATE THE HIDDEN COSTS OF A CLAIM
Talk about indirect costs, lost time, lost productivity. Hidden costs can drain a business. Worker’s compensation has higher chances of more indirect costs than direct ones.
The most common indirect costs include:
- Lower level of productivity and performance from an injured worker
- Work environment suffering from lower morale and productivity
- Time necessary to investigate the accident fully
- Knowledge that needs to be transferred to new employees
- Costs of training new employees
- Costs for lost or disrupted work
- Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) investigation costs
Highlighting the indirect costs associated with a workplace injury can help create an actionable plan to reduce these indirect costs. It can assist you in creating a structure for dealing with these costs and decreasing them over time.
For example, it is important to comply with OSHA regulations and document how a company adheres to OSHA to help reduce investigation costs. Keeping a comprehensive knowledge base may be able to help the company reduce training inefficiencies.
Mod Advisor Related Document:
- Hidden Claim Costs – Iceberg Doc
REPORT INJURIES ASAP
Talk about why reporting injuries right away can be beneficial to a business. Use some statistic that talks about why how costs increase the longer a claim is delayed from reporting. Make sure an accident investigation program is in place. There are also time limits to claims being reported.
Mod Advisor Related Documents:
- Timely Claim Reporting Why the First 24 Hours Matter
- State Compliance Documents (they discuss how long employees and employers have to report claims by state)
- Accident Investigation Workbook
- Accident Investigation Process – Flow Chart
- Sample Witness Statement – form
- Sample Incident & Near Miss Report
- Top 10 Signs of work comp fraud – poster
- Employee Responsibilities in A Work Comp Claim
PERFORM A MOD AUDIT
We all know that education is key when it comes to saving money on workers compensation, and an experienced mod can go a long way to assisting in this. Most businesses overpay for workers compensation, and there’s no reason that your client should be one of those. An in-depth mod audit involves injury analysis, cost analysis, verification of claim information, verification of payroll information and much more. Our software makes mod analysis and prediction of future mods easy with our reports. If you’re not reviewing these numbers, there’s a good chance your client is overpaying for workers compensation.
Mod Advisor Related Documents:
- Preparing for a work comp audit
- Importance of a Mod Audit – Case Study
- Preparing for a mod audit – marketing flyer
- Understanding Your Experience Rating Worksheet
- Sell Sheet – Mod Audit (why a mod audit matters for businesses)
We hope those five tips to reduce work comp costs were helpful! If you are interested in stepping up your mod analysis game and utilizing our resources, email our team at [email protected].