Top 5 Take Away Points 2016 National Work Comp & Disability Conf - Part 2

Hello, Michael Stack here with Amaxx. So I just got back from New Orleans, Louisiana… I want to talk to you about my top five take-away implementation points from the sessions that I attended. Continued from Part 1…

Take Away Point #2: Occupational Doctor Relationships

Take-away point number two is occupational doctor relationships, so occupational doctor relationships. This was a very dramatic point and dramatic example given by Laurie English from Excela Health, another Teddy Award-winning presentation. So obviously they’re a healthcare provider. The biggest challenge that they had was all their injured workers going to the emergency room to see non-occupational doctors. They had a relationship often times, they knew who the doctor was, the doctor would say, “Okay, Jane, you’ve got an injury. Here’s a script, you’ve got four days off work,” and then all the problems that start to come with that.

So a very dramatic example, and here’s what they did. they took those ER doctors, those non-occupational doctors that weren’t trained in workers’ compensation, weren’t trained in occupational medicine, off their panel. They took them off the even possibility to go see them, and if an injured worker does go see them, it costs them $100 co-pay. So they had to do this very dramatically. Not necessarily an easy process to change that culture, but they have done it successfully and seen dramatic results. Now those injured workers go to occupationally medicine-trained nurses who will facilitate their care, and they’ve seen significant results, so very dramatic example in a healthcare situation.

Now fast-forward to the return to work presentation given by Anne-Marie Amiel, from the city of Columbus in Georgia, very different type of workforce, public workforce. They don’t have the internal doctors that the employers are going to, very different than a healthcare situation, but the statement she made that I thought was very telling of the success of their program, the success of their return to work program. She said the first six months on the job she went to go personally and visit every one of the providers that they work with. Doctors, physical therapists, etc., talk to them about their program, talk to them about the expectations, talked about how they can work together as a partner to return those injured employees back to work to heal rather than keeping them off to heal before they return to work, that dramatic mindset. That was done by those face-to-face individual meetings, she spent that first six months on the job and then they saw that dramatic success and those dramatic results.

Take Away Point #3: Weekly Claims Meetings

So now let’s talk about the third take-away point, and this is an interesting point, because this is one that was also mentioned when I did my top five take-away points last year. Caryl Russo from Barnabas Health, Jennifer Saddy from American Airlines, both mentioned this concept of weekly meetings, weekly claims meetings as a key to success in their programs, Teddy Award winners. Danielle Hill from Hampton Road Transit, Jennifer Massey from Harder Mechanical Contractors, and Laurie English from Excela Health all talked about this idea of regular claims meetings.

Here’s the take-away. If all these award-winning programs are using and leveraging this concept, to win these awards, probably something to think about implementing in your program or refining in your program if it’s something that you’re doing or maybe just not doing as well as you possibly could. Here’s the take-away here of really how to get this started. If weekly sounds way too often and that’s something that you could never possibly do, start with quarterly. Start to have some success. Move that then up to monthly, then move that up to weekly. You’re talking about in these meetings where these claims are, how to work together towards a positive outcome and a positive resolution in each one of these individual claims. As the great Zig Zigler said, you don’t have to be great to start, but you do have to start to be great.

Continued…

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Author Michael Stack, Principal, COMPClub, Amaxx LLC. He is an expert in workers compensation cost containment systems and helps employers reduce their work comp costs by 20% to 50%. He works as a consultant to large and mid-market clients, is co-author of Your Ultimate Guide To Mastering Workers Comp Costs, a comprehensive step-by-step manual of cost containment strategies based on hands-on field experience, and is founder of COMPClub, an exclusive member training program on workers compensation cost containment best practices.