Your National Workers’ Comp Management ScoreTM will tell how you stack up.
To get your company’s National Workers’ Compensation Score, the planning team answers and discusses, as a team, the questions in WorkersCompKit®. Take the IQ Quick Check to see how it works and what you get. RIMS 2009 Benchmark Survey has a best practice section, so you can find out how your company stacks up to other companies. The WC Section is new in 2009.
When you take the full score, you receive a personalized National Workers’ Comp ScoreTM and customized recommendations for improvement.
To ensure validity of the score it is important to discuss the questions as a team. Members will have their own experiences and views regarding personnel, policies and procedures.
Review your Recommendations
In a formal team meeting review the recommendations you receive and discuss the priority of recommendations, potential challenges, and ways to overcome obstacles. Your leader team will serve as facilitators and appoint a team member to record action items, responsible parties and completion dates on the timetable for each recommendation. Include a consultant from the broker in the meeting to offer insight into ways to overcome obstacles.
Analyze Benchmarks and Develop Program Goals
Once the data is entered in the benchmark form, the benchmarks will be automatically calculated. Print all benchmarks and bring copies to team meeting.
As a team, discuss and compare the benchmarks to your company’s current baselines. Based on these comparisons establish goals for performance and improvement by setting preliminary injury rates, return-to- work ratios, and lost workday goals.
Even if injury rates are consistent with industry benchmarks, your goal is to beat the industry average to become best-in-class.
Use a Weekly Timetable
Your lead team needs to maintain a timetable (i.e., a project plan) to organize all activities and hold each team member accountable for completing assigned tasks in a timely manner. This will help ensure consistent project progress and keep focus on milestones. This timetable should be distributed to all team members weekly.
Determine your Program Name
As a team, determine an appropriate name for your program, such as Claims & Transitional Duty Program, abbreviated “CAT Program” or Injury Management & Prevention Plan, abbreviate “IMP Plan,” etc. A name gives the program an identity and it can easily be referenced via multiple parties. Catchy names also catch people’s attention.
Select your Injury Coordinator
One member of your company will be responsible for managing daily claims and corresponding with the claims adjuster to develop strategies for each claim in the program. This person will be given a title of Injury Coordinator (IC) or Return-to-Work Coordinator (RTWC).
The IC or RTWC must be a “get-things-done” type of person who is already familiar with the workers’ compensation process.
Ideally, this person must have experience with your company’s policies and procedures so changes are consistent with your corporate culture, also very important to the implementation phase.
The claims management component of your new program provides an organized and pre-planned process the employee passes through from the time of the injury until the employee is back to work full duty. A claims management process is very, very different from the way claims are handled in many companies in where employee is on his own and at the mercy of confusion by medical, legal, personal and other influences.
Schedule a Diagnostic File Review
Medical review is an important diagnostic tool, it is also important for your medical advisor to review a sampling of your files as part of an overall assessment. Start by submitting five to ten individual claims.(workersxzcompxzkit)
Medical review is also one of those areas not addressed in claims handling in other companies. Once again, the injured employee is left out in left field trying to figure it all out and at the mercy of medical, legal, personal and other influences – read “hires an attorney.” We guarantee, litigation is not going to lower your workers’ comp costs.
Author Robert Elliott, executive vice president, Amaxx Risks Solutions, Inc. has worked successfully for 20 years with many industries to reduce Workers’ Compensation costs, including airlines, health care, manufacturing, printing/publishing, pharmaceuticals, retail, hospitality and manufacturing. He can be contacted at: Robert_Elliott@ReduceYourWorkersComp.com or 860-553-6604.
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