Debbie Dragon or Wise Bread hosts this week’s Cavalcade of Risk, which she dubs the “the How Much Assurance Does Your Insurance Offer edition.” As usual, a good source of some of the best biweekly risk-related posts in the blogosphere!
OSHA – frequent citations – OSHA recently announced its Top 10 Enforcement Citations. For a more generic, non-company specific view, see the top 10 lists for the most frequently cited standards and the standards with the highest penalties. To narrow down to information to an industry SIC code, a state, or a size of employer, see the interactive frequently cited OSHA standards page.
Montana Supreme Court – Montana’s Supreme Court ruled that workers’ compensation benefits for permanently and totally disabled workers are meant to assist them for their “work life,” and not into retirement. Writing for the 5-2 majority, Justice William Leaphart stated that, “By acting to terminate benefits as it does, (the law) rationally advances the governmental purpose of providing wage-loss benefits that bear a reasonable relationship to actual wages lost.”
Chronic illness – This week, Roberto Ceniceros has featured a pair of posts related to chronic illness on his Comp Time blog. The first highlights a research report from the Integrated Benefits Institute in which nine in ten workers reported one or more chronic health problems. The report is based on 27,000 employee surveys. In his second post, Ceniceros explores the issue of wellness programs as they relate to chronic illness and workers comp. He makes the point that an increasing number of employees may be getting better health care attention after reporting a comp injury, but that is likely true mostly for employees of large, sophisticated employers.
Related to this issue, Peter Rousmaniere writes about “the elephant in the room” in his column in Risk and Insurance, noting that co-morbidities — such as obesity, depression, diabetes, sexual trauma, smoking, and drug addiction — derail the recovery of injured workers and pose challenges for claims adjusters and case managers. He makes the point that the the workers’ compensation courts are more inclined today to rule that insurers “own” the comorbidity that impedes recovery, as evidenced by the recent weight-loss surgery rulings.
Long road to recovery – the Pocono Record features the story of John Capanna’s long, slow recovery from a severe industrial injury. John was severely burned and disfigured in a flash explosion at an oil refinery some 30 years ago. It’s a story of courage and strength. Thanks to SafetynewsAlert for pointing us to this story.
Saving lives through safety – Robert Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute, makes the case that insurers don’t get enough credit for saving lives with safety research in this month’s National Underwriter. Among the points that he makes: “Today, workers’ comp insurers are a primary source of loss control expertise for millions of American businesses – with tangible results. Consider that in 1926, an employee working in a manufacturing setting had a 25 percent chance of being injured on the job. In other words, one-in-four workers suffered injuries each year. In 2008, the odds were only about 5 percent, or just one-in-20.”
Ferreting out fraud through social networking – Attorney Molly DiBianca discusses risks entailed in using Facebook to investigate employee fraud, suggesting guidelines to ensure employer protection.
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Tags: burns, case law, catastrophic injuries, comorbidities, Facebook, illness, investigations, Montana, OSHA, recovery, Robert Hartwig
