Our Boston neighbor Tinker Ready hosts this week’s edition of Health Wonk Review at Boston Health News and it’s a killer edition – check it out.
Awkward – Making the web circuits, many have been posting about the Bollywood safety dance video by Transocean’s CEO. We encourage CEOs and senior managers to ensure that safety is top company priority – so on the one hand, we applaud the attempt. But in light of the recent explosion that resulted in 11 deaths, this video is ironic and embarrassing. This, coupled with the recent news that the company’s disaster response plan was riddled with egregious errors leaves one to think that BP’s risk management efforts were not as substantive as they might have appeared on the surface. The folks over at Risk Management Monitor have been posting about various aspects of the BP story. Jared Wade gives us the rundown on BP’s pattern of neglect and corner cutting as well as an infographics style rundown on the spill. Also, if you haven’t seen the wildly popular fake BP PR Twitter account, it might give you a chuckle if you are into black humor. BP is not amused by the parody.
Truck drivers & sleep apnea – A study on sleep apnea and truck drivers that was recently published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine found that treatment for sleep apnea led to more than $6,000 in total health plan and disability cost savings per treated driver. “On average, researchers found that for treated drivers, health plan costs decreased an average of $2,700 in the first year and another $3,100 in the second year compared to no change for untreated drivers. The treated drivers also missed fewer workdays (average 4.4 days in the first year) and had lower short-term disability costs ($528 over two years).”
Battle of the pharma giants – Joe Paduda keeps an eye on the Caremark vs Walmart pharma fight and offers informed commentary about what’s going on.
No go in Ohio for Noe – The Ohio Supreme Court has rejected Thomas Noe’s request for an appeal of his convictions. You may recall that Noe got in trouble for the theft of $13 million from $50 million that he invested in rare-coins and beanie babies for the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation. His capers were a contributing factor in bringing down Governor Taft and various other state officials. Stories like this don’t surface often in workers comp – we have quite an archive from the early days of the scandal through conviction and the early days of the appeal.
Octomom settles WC claim – From California comes the news that Nadya Suleman (aka “Octomom”) settled her workers comp lawsuit for $23,120. The injury occurred more than a decade ago. See my colleague’s prior post: Comp as Enabler: The Nadya Suleman Story
Tooting our own horn – thanks to Evan Carmichael for including Workers Comp Insider in his listing of theTop 50 HR Blogs: 2010 – it’s a good list and worth checking out. EvanCarmichael.com is a good resource for entrepreneurs and small businesses.
Also, our post on N.Y.’s domestic workers bill of rights was reprinted at Today’s Workplace, an excellent group blog on issues of workplace rights and employment law sponsored by Workplace Fairness, a non-profit organization helping to preserve and promote employee rights. Both resources are well worth your attention.
Tags: BP, coingate, domestic workers, drivers, honors, HWR, New York, Ohio, sleep apnea, Thomas Noe
