If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. That quote was originally stated by Benjamin Franklin.
Account Handling Instructions Are Planning & Communication Tool
Hello, my name is Michael Stack, I’m the CEO of Amaxx. That concept of planning comes to light in the world of worker’s compensation in the form of your account handling instructions, your account services instructions, client instructions, et cetera. Various different TPAs and carriers have different names to mean the same thing, which is this tool, this communication tool between the employer and the claims handling organization, whether that’s your TPA or carrier. It’s a highly effective way to get on the same page for how you’re going to approach your worker’s compensation claims, how you’re going to handle them. What are those set of instructions for what to do as far as a communication tool, and then on the back side, an accountability tool.
You say, “Well, this is what we’re supposed to do,” and did we do it or not? And then you can come together with that and adjust as needed, tweak as needed, if the plan isn’t going as planned.
A number of things that I want you to address, and we cover this really in full detail in our course called How to Script Winning Account Handling Instructions, you can see the link to register for that below. One of these pieces that I want you to really focus on and highlight, because I feel like it gets missed the most, we’ve come up with all these things about settlements, settlement authority, and how to use medical vendors, and all this different stuff, and look at what term it is we want to use, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera in our planning. But the key piece that is so critical is this chain of command or communication or reliable contacts for the adjuster at the employer site.
Clear and Responsive Employer Contacts
For the adjuster at the employer site, who are those reliable, clear contacts that know their contacts and know that they need to get the adjuster information when the adjuster needs it? Because if you come up with this great plan, it’s like, “Okay, adjuster, I want you to do X, Y, and Z, and I want you to do all this stuff, and I want you to do this report, I want you to give me this data on X number of days, and I want you to get it all right all the time. Oh, but by the way, when you have a problem, you have a question, or you need to ask the employer something, we may or may not get back to you. I know Jane is your contact, but Jane’s on vacation. So you’re going to have to wait in order to get that information,” and that just doesn’t work.
So a number of things that I want you to do when you come up with this clear and concise list of reliable contacts for the adjuster at the employer site. Number one is, what is the chain of command. What is the chain of command at the employer site? So how does that adjuster kind of get to understand what’s going on at the company? Who’s going to send in, or who needs to receive, that notice of injury whenever an injury occurs? What are the injury details? How do they find out what happened? When the adjuster is going through their three-point contact, who are they calling? And who is that number, are they going to be reliable, are they going to be there to answer that phone?
Who Is The Back-Up Employer Contact?
Number four, who do they call to get the wage history? Who do they call to get the wage history? And then last piece here, there’s a number more, but these are just a couple of highlights. Who’s in charge of the light-duty program, who do they contact for light duty? And then, just in that example that I just gave, if Jane’s the contact and Jane’s on vacation, who’s the back-up? Who’s that back-up person that they’re going to contact?
So for every piece within your account instructions, who is the contact at the employer that’s going to be reliable and that’s going to get that adjuster the information they need to do their job appropriately? If you have that information, then it’s going to run just that much smoother.
Again, my name is Michael Stack, I’m the CEO of Amaxx. Remember, your work today in worker’s compensation can have a dramatic impact on your company’s bottom line, but it will have a dramatic impact on someone’s life. So, be great.
Author Michael Stack, CEO Amaxx LLC. He is an expert in workers’ compensation cost containment systems and helps employers reduce their workers’ comp costs by 20% to 50%. He works as a consultant to large and mid-market clients, is a 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 & lead trainer of Amaxx Workers’ Comp Training Center .
Contact: mstack@reduceyourworkerscomp.com.
Workers’ Comp Roundup Blog: https://blog.reduceyourworkerscomp.com/
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