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

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 2…

Take Away Point #4: Diagnostic Imaging Awareness

Point number four. This comes from Dr. Jacob Lazarovic and Stuart Colburn’s presentation on leveraging a medical expert to not get burned on causation. Dr. Lazarovic was talking about this stat of really reading these diagnostic images, and here’s the figures and here’s the really startling statistics when you’re looking at really reading and diagnosing from a MRI image, for example. 30% of the time, given the same image, given to two different doctors, those two different doctors are going to disagree on the diagnosis. 30% of the time, three out of 10 times, those two doctors are going to disagree on the diagnosis from reading that image.

Here’s the most telling and most interesting stat. Same doctor, given the same image, one week apart without any further identifying information, the doctor reads it one way on day one and reads it a different way on day seven. So the same doctor’s going to disagree with himself or herself 25% of the time and given to two different doctors they’re going to disagree with each other 30% of the time. The take-away point here is just this recognition that it’s not an absolute diagnosis when you get that from the doctor. Have a second opinion ready to go, have this understanding that just one diagnosis is not always the right diagnosis. Those are just bonus take-away from that session, that same session, Stuart Colburn made the point when talking about the selection of your doctor and the defense of your case, he has to question, “Are you selecting the doctor because of the opinion that him or her is going to give you? Or are you selecting a doctor to win the case?” Very important distinction, really, in the selection of those medical providers.

Take Away Point #5: Jumper Claims

Okay, last take-away point here is from Bill Zachry’s presentation. He was talking about jumper claims. Going back and sort of really relating to that same concept that Marcos Iglesias was talking about in his presentation with his bio-cycle social factors. Bill Zachry got into some more of these statistics of what this actually means in terms of cost. We see this as a national trend, but we’re talking specifically about Albertsons when he was the risk manager there. 3% of their claims represented 60% of those claims’ costs. 3% of their claims represented 60% of the claims’ costs. A very small percentage of claims representing a very large percentage of the costs.

We see this nationally that figure is 5% of claims representing 80% of the costs, but specifically for Albertsons this is how it worked and here were his numbers. He wanted to bring this down in half, cut this 3% in half, effect a very small percentage, 1 1/2% of those claims to bring down the costs in their program by 30%. So all these things that we’re talking about from these take-aways, these weekly meetings, having those medical provider relationships at the start, being able to bring in particularly in these weekly meetings, identifying some of those bio-cycle social factors early in the claim to bring in the resources necessary to influence the outcome of those claims.

Those were my five key take-away points. A lot of, of course, other information was discussed, but hopefully you’ll review your notes and you work towards implementing at least just one of these points to start to see a dramatic result in your program. Now if you’re watching this video somewhere other than reduceyourworkerscomp.com, go ahead and go to that website, sign up to receive a lot more free information on how to control and reduce your workers’ comp costs. To take it just one step further you can go to workerscompclub.com/livesstreamtraining to join me on my next livestream training. Again, I’m Michael Stack with Amaxx. Remember, your success in workers’ compensation is defined by your integrity, so be great.

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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.