Archive for March, 2011

Wonks Play Ball

Thursday, March 31st, 2011

Jason Shafrin of Healthcare Economics is hosting the “Opening Day” version of the Health Wonk Review. Jason can be forgiven for his rather bizarre notion of the Milwaukee Brewers winning the World Series, as his line up of health-related articles is first rate.
Go Sox!

NCCI study on safe lifting programs for long-term care facilities

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011

A few years ago, an important NIOSH study on nursing home lifting equipment demonstrated that the benefits outweigh the costs. In addition to recapping the equipment investment in less than three years, NIOSH found a 61% reduction in resident-handling workers’ compensation injury rates; a 66% drop in lost workday rates; and a 38% decline in restricted workdays. Plus, the rate of post-intervention assaults during resident transfers dropped by 72%. That’s pretty impressive.
Now we have further evidence based on the recently-released study by NCCI: Safe Lifting Programs at Long-Term Care Facilities and Their Impact on Workers Compensation Costs (PDF). The study was a collaborative effort with the University of Maryland School of Medicine. It was limited to facilities that have had safe lift programs in place for more than three years. Originally, researches intended to compare the experience of facilities with and without such programs, but during the course of the research, the rate of adoption of safe lifting devices was so great that close to 95% of facilities had them and about 80% of those used them regularly.
NCCI summarizes the study results:

“After controlling for ownership structure and differences in workers compensation systems across states, the statistical analysis performed as part of this study shows that an increased emphasis on safe lift programs at long-term care facilities is associated with fewer workplace injuries and lower workers compensation costs. More precisely, higher values of the safe lift index are associated with lower values for both frequency and total costs. The safe lift index captures information on the policies, training, preferences, and barriers surrounding the use of powered mechanical lifts. The institution’s commitment to effectively implementing a safe lift program appears to be the key to success.”

One of the interesting aspects of the study is the safe lift index, referenced above, which was developed by researchers to aggregate answers from the survey questions into a single number. Researchers looked at several variables pertaining to policies and procedures. These included the training of certified nursing assistants in proper use of mechanized lifts, preferences of the Director of Nursing for powered mechanical lift use, potential barriers to the use of powered mechanical lifts, and enforcement of the lift policies. The report discusses these factors in greater detail, and demonstrate that there are many variables beyond just the equipment that affect overall program efficacy.
Many states have safe patient handling laws
In recent years, a number of states have enacted legislation mandating safe patient lifting – and that no doubt has contributed to the rapid adoption rate noted by NCCI researchers. According to the American Nursing Association, a strong advocate for such legislation, 9 states have implemented safe patient handling laws. These include Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, and Washington, with a resolution from Hawaii. In addition, they are tracking states with pending legislation in 2001, currently 6 states: California, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri and Vermont. You can also track this legislation via a map and you can access additional resources and information at ANA’s excellent Safe Patient Handling website.
Prior posts on safe lifting
Texas enacts safe lifting guidelines for a hazardous industry
Washington passes “Safe Patient Handling” legislation
NIOSH study on nursing home lifting equipment: benefits outweigh costs
Safe Lifting and Movement of Nursing Home Residents

Cavalcade of Risk and other news notes from the around the Web

Thursday, March 24th, 2011

Ready for a bi-weekly grab-bag of risk-related reading? Jacob A. Irwin hosts Cavalcade of Risk # 127 – Riskiest Jobs Edition at My Personal Finance Journey.
Agents & Experience Mods – What role do insurance agents play in keeping a client’s workers’ comp losses as low as possible? In PropertyCasualty360, Kevin Ring of the Institute of WorkCompProfessionals offers Six Ways to Keep a Client’s Experience Mod Under Control.
Federalization – Over the years, talk about the impending federalization of workers comp has surfaced time and again. In recent years, with healthcare reform and a move to increased federal oversight of financial industries, talk of workers comp federalization has increased. Joe Paduda classifies this as a “never gonna happen” thing, and he makes his case in a four-part argument: part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4.
More charges filed in Upper Big Branch case – Ken Ward of Coal Tattoo reports that criminal charges were filed against a former Massey Energy employee who faked his certification to perform safety exams. Ward reports that “…he is the second person to be charged as part of what is said to be a broad federal criminal investigation of the explosion and safety practices at the Massey operation.” You can find more of Ken’s reporting in the archives of the Upper Big Branch Disaster.
Healthcare – Liz Borkowski of The Pump Handle looks at The Affordable Health Care Act’s first year and sees some disappointments but also great progress. Her post highlights a provisions that have already kicked in. And in another healthcare report, a new survey by Gallup reveals that there is a wide discrepancy in health coverage across U.S. metro areas. Nine of the ten most uninsured metro areas surveyed were in Texas and California; 8 out of the metro areas with the lowest percentage of uninsureds were in the northeast.
Just for fun – Your enjoyment and amusement at the following site will be in direct proportion to your age: Obsolete Skills is a wiki database of things we used to know that are no longer very useful to us. Some of these skills are everyday matters like dialing a rotary phone or adjusting rabbit ears, but the list is also a compendium of disappeared jobs, such as taking shorthand, asbestos installation, blacksmiths, bookbinding, and more. It’s a fun site to browse and because it’s a wiki, you can also contribute.
Quick Takes

The heroes of Fukushima; insurance issues related to Japan’s catastrophe

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

We are now a week and a half into the Japanese disaster, which encompassed a terrible trio of catastrophic events: an earthquake, a tsunami, and a near-nuclear meltdown that looked to be vying for a top spot in the record books. The death toll tops 9,000, with another 13,000 still missing. And today at the Fukushima Nuclear Plant, although a large scale meltdown looks to have been narrowly averted, the extent of the radiation leaks and the related damage are still yet to be fully assessed.
The heroes of the past week, those credited with keeping events at the nuclear plant from spiraling irretrievably out of control, are being hailed as “the Fukushima 50.” In actual numbers, they are more like 200 courageous souls, taking turns in 50-person shifts while the world watched from outside the 20 kilometer evacuation zone.
When the full extent of the crisis at the Fukushima plant became apparent in the wee hours of March 15, TEPCO wanted to remove all staff. Prime Minister Kan summoned TEPCO President Masataka Shimizu to his Office and told him that leaving was was not an option. “This is not a matter of TEPCO going under; it’s about what will become of Japan,” he said.
ABC news sheds a bit more light on the team who struggled to restore order to the crippled plant. The crews are though to be hands-on workers, technicians, rather than managers.

“The crews are not necessarily made up of strong young men. Emergency nuclear scenarios suggest asking older retirees to volunteer, not because they’re more expendable, or even because they’re more skilled, but because even if they’re exposed to massive amounts of radiation, history has shown they would die of old age before they die of radiation induced cancers, which can take decades to develop.”

And what’s the extent of the health risks they are facing? The Power company reports that at least 25 workers and 5 members of Japan’s Self Defense Force had were exposed to unsafe levels of radiation. There are other injuries and two workers remain missing. As for “the fifty,” ABC says that not all experts believe that the radiation levels the workers are exposed to will be fatal.

“While radiation-induced cancers are a serious worry for those exposed to high doses of radiation, they usually take at least a few years to set in.
“You may see an incidence of cancer 30 years down the road. Cataracts can set in in 30 to 40 years,” said Jenkins. “Leukemia showed up within a few years in the atomic bomb survivors, but solid cancers did not appear until 10 years and continue [to show up] to this day,” said Hall.”

Wikipedia’s page on the Fukushima 50 offers more detail about the radiation exposure these workers faced in comparison to that of other nuclear workers.

“The international limit for radiation exposure for nuclear workers is 20 millisievert (20 mSv) per year, averaged over five years, with a limit of 50 mSv in any one year, however for workers performing emergency services EPA guidance on dose limits is 100 mSv when “protecting valuable property” and 250 mSv when the activity is “life saving or protection of large populations.”
Prior to the accident, the maximum permissible dose for Japanese nuclear workers was 100 mSv in any one year, but on 15 March 2011, the Japanese Health and Labor Ministry enforced the permitted 250 mSv limit, in light of the situation at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.”

For additional perspective on the numbers, see this excellent radiation dose chart.

Revisiting Chernobyl
As we approach the 25 year anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, the inevtiable comparisons have been made. But Japan’s a markedly different scenario than the one faced by the workers at Chernobyl, where 29 firefighters, rescuers and nuclear plant workers died in the two months following the nuclear disaster. At least 19 other workers have died since 1987, and others have reportedly died from leukemia and other illnesses. You can read the gruesome story of deceased Fireman Vasily Ignatenko, as told by his wife Lyudmilla Ignatenko.

Subsequent clean-up teams were called The Liquidators of Chernobyl. These were folks tasked with the cleanup. Of this cleanup. Wikipedia says:

Between 1986 and 1992, it is thought between 600,000 and one million people participated in works around Chernobyl and their health was endangered due to radiation. Because of the dissolution of the USSR in the 1990s, evaluations about liquidators’ health are difficult, since they come from various countries (mostly Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, but also other former Soviet republics). Furthermore, the government of Russia has never been keen on giving the true figures for the disaster, or even on making serious estimates. However, according to a study by Belarusian physicians, rate of cancers among this population is about four times greater than the rest of the population. (Wikipedia notes that “All the figures quoted by various agencies are controversial.”)

Insurance issues related to Japan’s disaster
According to the Insurance Information Institute, Japan’s earthquake could cost $15 billion to $35 billion, one of the costliest ever. This would be a tough enough kick in the shins for the insurance industry, but III notes that, “… four of the five costliest earthquakes and tsunamis in the past 30 years have occurred within the past 13 months.”
See more from III at their excellent resource page on the Japan earthquake and Pacific Tsunamis
Here are some other insurance-related articles that shed light on one or another aspect of this mammoth event.
We aren’t up our international compensation law, but our Googling turned up this overview of Workers Accident Compensation in Japan.
Joanne Wojcik tackled the nuclear topic in Business Insurance in her article Coverage restrictions expected to limit nuclear claims (subscription required). We offer this excerpt:

Under Japan’s 1961 Law on Compensation for Nuclear Damage, which was amended in 2010,
power plant operators’ liability for accidents such as those after the earthquake and tsunami is limited to 120 billion yen (about $1.5 billion), with the Japanese government assuming responsibility for any third-party damage or bodily injury claims beyond that amount.
To meet the requirements of the law, Japanese nuclear power plant operators buy property and liability insurance from the Japan Atomic Energy Insurance Pool. JAEIP provides nuclear property, nuclear liability, general liability and terrorism coverage to nuclear power plant operators. However, JAEIP does not sell the utilities coverage for earthquake damage, tsunami damage or business interruption, leaving the Japanese government responsible for those costs.
If a nuclear incident similar to that occurring in Japan were to happen in the United States, the U.S. Price-Anderson Act limits liability for nuclear power plant operators to $12.6 billion.

At Risk Management Monitor, Emily Holbrooke looks at the issue of business interruption and its effects on global corporations. Many think the real story is one of good engineering saving thousands of lives – Jared Wade discusses this in his posting about how Japan’s bulding codes prevented casualties.
Also in Business Insurance, Judy Greenwwald looks at the complicated claims process ahead:

Corporate policyholders that do business with companies in Japan face a complicated process when they attempt to tap their contingent business interruption coverage because of the intertwining nature of the disasters that have struck the nation, observers say.
“This is going to be one of the most complicated catastrophes that I’ve seen,” said William Okelson, Chicago-based director of property claims for Lockton Cos. L.L.C. There are “so many variables,” including the original quake, the tsunami, resulting fires, nuclear power plant dangers and the government rationing of electricity.

At LexisNexis, Julius Young examines a “what if ” scenario: What If? Workers’ Comp and Earthquakes. Jon Gelman puts the events in some historical context relative to other large-scale disasters and nuclear events: A Nuclear Workers’ Compensation Disaster.

Single Payer in Vermont: Occ Doc or Not?

Monday, March 21st, 2011

In a move stunning for its contrariness, Vermont is moving toward a single payer health care system. In the course of the debate, the inevitable issue of whether to include workers comp has come up. At this point, a committee will make recommendations on whether to “integrate or align” workers comp with the state’s radical reconfiguration of the health care system. (Further details are available at WorkCompCentral – subscription required.)
The Vermont approach would completely separate indemnity from medical benefits. Employers would continue to pay for the indemnity portion, but are unlikely to have any input into treatment plans. The Insider has pointed out – ad nauseum, some might say – that the relatively miniscule comp system is quite different from the behemoth health delivery system. In the interests of saving the Vermont committee a little time, here are a few of the conundrums confronting anyone trying to merge the two systems:

: Comp is paid solely by employers. Injured workers pay nothing (no co-pays, not deductibles, ever).
: Consumers pay quite a bit for conventional health coverage: a portion of premiums along with co-pays and deductibles for treatment and for medications
: Comp has very narrowly defined eligibility requirements, while conventional health has virtually none
: The goal of comp is to provide medical treatment for injured workers and, if possible, return them to work; if return to work is not possible, comp pays lost wage benefits and injury-related medical bills virtually forever.
: The goal of the conventional health system is to take care of people, regardless of the employment implications
: Comp provides indemnity, temporary or permanent, for those unable to work. No such wage replacements exist in the conventional health system
: Perhaps most important, medical services under comp have an occupational focus, with the explicit goal of returning people to their jobs. In the conventional health system, any occupational focus would be subordinate to the goals of the consumer.

Should Vermont achieve its ambitious goal of universal coverage, the presumption is that everyone would have a primary care physician, who would serve as gatekeeper for all medical services. (Let’s set aside, for a moment, where the Green Mountain state will be able to find these primary care doctors.) In a unified system, injured workers would go to their primary care physicians for work-related injuries. These primary care docs may or may not focus on returning their patients to work. Many people hate their jobs and might welcome a few weeks or months of indemnity-supported leave. The primary care physician might be quite sympathetic to their cause.
This brings us to the great divide between conventional health care and workers comp: conventional health care may or may not embrace the need for return to work. Indeed, if the work is hazardous – as much work is – the doctor may want to discourage his patient from returning to it. The doctor’s goal is to “do no harm” – so why send someone back into harm’s way? If the patient suffers from lower back problems and has a job involving material handling, what is the right thing for the doctor to do?
Who Pays?
In the current system, workers comp pays doctors for eligible medical services. Whether or not they like the comp fee schedules, doctors are acutely aware that comp is paying for the services of a particular individual. Often, treatment is provided by occupational specialists, who bring a unique “return-to-work” focus to the treatment plan. These occ docs are often in communication with employers seeking to return injured workers to productive employment. The occ docs specify the restrictions so that employers can design appropriate modified duty jobs. The employers have a sense of urgency, as they are losing the productivity of the individual who is out of work – and of course, they are paying all of the costs associated with the injury.
Under the proposed Vermont system, all bills will be paid the same way. Comp disappears from the doctor’s view. Employers may have little input into the choice of doctors or specific treatment plans. The role of occupational doctors is unclear, to say the least. Given that primary care physicians generally lack an occupational focus, return to work may become secondary to the comfort and personal inclinations of the patient. As a result, there is a risk of substantial increases in indemnity costs.
When contemplating change on the scale of Vermont’s single payer system, it is tempting to brush aside the implications for something as small as the workers comp system. That would be a big mistake. The system might be small, but the costs to the state’s employers are already substantial and have the potential for going much higher. The comp system plays an unique and long-established role in protecting both workers and employers. As they take steps to transform healthcare in Vermont, lawmakers need to remember that workers comp itself is worthy of their protection.

Health Wonk Review’s Spring Training edition & assorted news items

Thursday, March 17th, 2011

Health Wonk Review – What do baseball and healthcare have in common? Find out – Glenn Laffel of Pizaazz hosts a fresh helping of the best of the health policy blogosphere: Health Wonk Review: Spring Training Edition
Does an anti-immigrant climate affect workers comp costs? – At Comp Time, Roberto Ceniceros discusses a recent news story in which Tom Hensley, president of Fieldale Farms Corp, testifies before the Georgia General Assembly about the detrimental impact that anti-immigration measures are having on his business. The impact included higher turnover and higher workers comp costs. Roberto is interested in hearing if anybody else has witnessed a similar trend of Latinos fleeing a state because of anti-immigrant sentiment and then claims trending upward – drop him anot if you have something to add.
Can you hear me now? Musicians and other workers who are exposed to loud music in their workplace are typically given short shrift in the occupational safety and health literature. Recent studies at nightclubs show that all employees (waiters, bartenders, DJs, etc,) were exposed to noise levels above internationally recommended limits and were at a higher risk of early hearing loss and tinnitus. The NIOSH Science Blog discusses music-induced hearing loss.
Giffords covered by work comp – Stephanie Innes of the Arizona Daily Star reports that federal workers’ comp is footing the recovery bill for Gabrielle Giffords and two of her employees who were shot in January. Because they were working, it’s an on-the-job injury. The federal law has no cap on medical payments, which is fortunate since the story reports that, “The Brain Injury Association of America says inpatient rehabilitation costs can range from $600 to $8,000 a day depending on services, and outpatient rehabilitation can cost $600 to $1,000 a day.”
Shrinking employer appetite for RTW? – Joe Paduda looks at how the economy may impact workers comp in 2012. Is higher severity in the offing? Joe talks about why that might be the case.
What makes a good claims organization? – At PropertyCasualty360, Carl Van, president and CEO of the International Insurance Institute, Inc., has posted the first in a three-part series on The Five Standards of Great Claims Organizations. See how your organization or your vendor stacks up.
Complex care – the folks at TMS continue to demonstrate that in complex care cases, the devil is in the details – and those details may be impeding an injured worker’s recovery and costing you money. See Pressure mapping: The underwear case for another example of how a small problem can become a big one.
Cool tool – Calculate your injury and illness incidence rates for your organization and compare them with national, state-specific, or industry-specific averages: Incidence rate calculator and comparison tool
Jobs of yesteryearPtak Science Books features a series of photos of Pennsylvania Coal Boys on the job in 1895 excerpted from an issue of Scientific American.
JapanHR Web Cafe has posted various resources, including options for donations. The interactive before and after satellite images are very dramatic, giving some sense of scope.

Are nurses and health care workers facing more on-the-job violence?

Monday, March 14th, 2011

If you asked the average person to list professions with the highest rates of violent assault, few would put health care professionals high up on that list. But the reality is that when it comes to workplace violence, nurses, nursing aids, and paramedics have the dubious distinction of being very high up on the list; only police and correctional officers suffer a higher rate of on-the-job assaults. And many nurses say that the violence is only getting worse.
In a fact sheet on violence, The International Council of Nurses, a federation of more than 130 national nurses associations representing the millions of nurses worldwide, says that:

  • Health care workers are more likely to be attacked at work than prison guards or police officers.
  • Nurses are the health care workers most at risk, with female nurses considered the most vulnerable.
  • General patient rooms have replaced psychiatric units at the second most frequent area for assaults.
  • Physical assault is almost exclusively perpetrated by patients.
  • 97% of nurse respondents to a UK survey knew a nurse who had been physically assaulted during the past year.
  • 72% of nurses don’t feel safe from assault in their workplace.
  • Up to 95% of nurses reported having been bullied at work.
  • Up to 75% of nurses reported having been subjected to sexual harassment at work.

Last fall, the issue of safety for nurses and allied health professional was brought to the forefront after the deaths of two California healthcare workers in separate incidents. In October, psychiatric technician Donna Gross was strangled to death and robbed at Napa State Hospital. Days later, nurse Cynthia Barraca Palomata died after being assaulted by an inmate at Contra Costa County’s correctional facility in Martinez. The deaths have sparked a new push for better security and stronger worker safeguards, particularly in settings treating prisoners and psychiatric patients.
While the occupational danger in environments like prisons and psychiatric hospitals is recognized and real, these are hardly the only high-hazard settings in which nurses work. Hospital emergency rooms are widely recognized as a hazardous environment, but violence occurs in other wards, too. Last year, the Well, a NY Times healthcare blog, featured an article by RN Theresa Brown entitled Violence on the Oncology Ward. And the CDC recently spotlighted research focusing on an increase in assaults on nursing assistants in nursing homes. In that study, 35% of nursing assistants reported physical injuries resulting from aggression by residents, and 12% reported experiencing a human bite during the year before the interview. There are no healthcare settings that are immune. Assaults routinely occur in general hospitals, in health clinics, and in patients’ homes.
The perpetrators of violence are varied: While many assaults are by patients, friend and family members of patients also can commit the assaults. There are also rapists or muggers who are targeting healthcare settings or solitary workers; drug addicts and robbers, who are looking for medications; and domestic violence brought into the workplace. And it’s unclear why violence is on the rise. Many point to staff shortages. Others see the preponderance of alcohol, drugs, and ready access to weapons as contributing factors; others think that hospital administrators do too little in the area of prevention.
Some are seeking legislative relief that would require hospitals and healthcare facilities to have safety and security plans and training in place. In a posting on KevinMD.com, respected physician Kevin Pho suggests that the rising tide of violence against healthcare workers might be emblematic of a dysfunctional health system, where healthcare is viewed as a commodity, and the caregiver-patient relationship is deteriorating. He says:

“Sometimes the simplest approaches are the most effective. Rather than adding security or installing metal detectors to prevent hospital violence, doctors and nurses could do a better job of empathizing with patients who are under stress when they are hospitalized or are angry because they’ve waited hours for medical care. At the same time, patients must realize that health care professionals are doing the best they can with an overtaxed health care system and should never resort to violence or abuse.”

In HealthLeaders Media, John Commins discusses an innovative approach undertaken by the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics – a program to codify risk of hospital violence.
Recently, the Emergency Nurses Association issued a Workplace Violence Toolkit, targeted specifically at emergency department managers or designated team leaders.

Disaster in Japan

Friday, March 11th, 2011

Our thoughts and prayers are with the people in Asia who are suffering through a disaster of unprecedented scale. The digital age allows us to watch the apocalyptic images: entire neighborhoods being swept to sea; burning houses borne upon the dark tide of water and debris; hundreds of vehicles swept along as if they were rudderless boats; the boats themselves powerless against the sheer force of the waters. We engineer our buildings, our infrastructure, our vehicles, our very lives on the assumption that the odds are always with us, that destructive forces of this magnitude are very unlikely to rise up from the depths of the ocean. And yet, on occasion, arise they do.
It will take months to sort out the damages. Indeed, the damage has not even run its brutal and indifferent course. But we cannot allow this horrific moment to pass without at least a glance at the implications for the subject of this blog, the insurance industry. Insurance is all about risk and risk transfer. Individuals and most businesses are too small to absorb the risk of loss that surrounds us. We purchase insurance as a hedge against disaster: loss of life, property, assets, physical ability, etc. The law of large numbers works in favor of the insurer: sell enough policies, expand your markets far and wide, and the risk of loss is spread out over an immense area. A catastrophe in one place is absorbed by the absence of losses elsewhere.
In the scale of what is happening in Japan, there is no elsewhere. No actuarial calculation can take into account the implications of losses on this scale. And even if the actuaries could come up with a number, the cost of the insurance would preclude anyone from buying it.
Here’s one relatively minor insurance issue emerging from the rubble in Japan: the quake hit at 2:30 in the afternoon. Many of the people being swept away by the surging waters were working. Their deaths will be compensable under whatever form of workers comp exists in Japan.
Our modern lifestyles do not recognize risk and disruption on this scale. We somehow think ourselves immune from disaster. It brings to mind a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley about another powerful and confident civilization that could not foresee an end to its dominion:
Ozymandias
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
A century of horrific wars and occasional natural disasters have taught us that our arrogance and presumed mastery of the world are illusions. The lesson is clear: Ozymandias and his ilk (Muammar Gaddafi comes to mind) rule with arrogance and contempt. By contrast, our actions must be as full of generosity and compassion as possible. The risks that lurk in our lives may be beyond calculation, but what truly matters is our ability to embrace the time given to us and help those whose lives have been devastated by chance.

The wacky world of workers comp

Friday, March 11th, 2011

We have to wonder if TV has really jumped the shark when we heard the premise of an upcoming sitcom today.
Now you’ve probably all been feeling slighted: there have been cop shows, doctor shows, teacher shows, even mortician shows – why the heck don’t claims adjusters and insurance agents ever get any love?
Relax, your prayers are answered: Morgan Fairchild to Star in Comedy Pilot Presentation ‘Workers Comp’. The show is being produced in Florida.
That scintillating topic of workers getting injured on the job, there’s a hilarious premise: Fraud hijinks! Injury pratfalls! Wacky claims! Processing snafus! Can’t wait to see it!
I guess this is as good a time as any to announce our new Hollywood division: “Lynch Ryan: Workers Comp Consultant to the Stars. ”
(Thanks for the tip go to Helen King Knight)

Risk roundup for the week

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

Jay and Louis Norris have posted the 126th edition of Cavalcade of Risk at Colorado Life Insurance Insider – and it’s a good one. We post blog news roundups regularly – and we are always delighted when our friends from Colorado host – they do a great job summarizing, presenting and commenting on submissions. Check it out!