Peggy Salvatore posts a sweet Health Wonk Review – Valentine’s Day Edition: Here’s Your Heart! at Healthcare Talent Transformation blog. The compendium of posts from some of the brightest minds in the health policy blogsphere is a good way to take a biweekly pulse of healthcare policy developments if the topic isn’t on your radar every day!
Valentine’s Day – As long as romance is in the air today ….Taking the pulse about workplace romance on Valentine’s Day and 5 Tips To Avoid Legal Fallout From Workplace Romance. Also, February is heart health for women month: Check out (and circulate) the Mayo Clinic’s Heart disease in women: Understand symptoms and risk factors. And on the silly side, see Cupid urges you to Insure Your Love
You may be older than you think – Kevin Ring of PropertyCasualty360 offers the first installment of a two part series discussing NCCI’s recent reasearch on aging: For Older Workers, The Game Has Changed: Part 1. One of the interesting points is that at least in terms of claim costs, the research suggests that redefining “older” as workers over aged 35 makes more sense.
The business case for safety – Drew Greenblatt, president of Marlin Steel, offers this advice to employers: Stop thinking of safety as an obligation. The rewards are greater than you think. Marlin Steel, a U.S.-based manufacturer of wire baskets and sheet-metal fabrications that has grown 25% over the past three years, just passed 1,500 consecutive days without a safety accident. Related: Calculating the ROI of corporate social responsibility
If your RTW program is broken, check these common mistakes – EBN has features a good slideshow that covers 10 costly return-to-work mistakes – it encompasses everying from failing to account for the effect of comorbidities to failing to understand the requirements of FMLA, ADA and other laws. See if your program measures up.
OSHA leadership – Wondering if there will be any OSHA leadership changes at OSHA in President Obama’s second term? Not according to Jordan Barab, deputy assistant secretary, who recently said that he and David Michaels will stay in place. No successor has been named for uutgoing Labor Secretary Hilda Solis yet. (Hat tip to Tammy Miser of The Weekly Toll).
Rise in “questionable claims” – The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) recently released its 2012 questionable claims report. Over the period from 2010 to 2012, NICB saw a 26.7% percent overall increase in referred questionable claims, and a 15.7% increase from 2011 to 2012. Questionable claims are those claims that NICB member insurance companies refer to NICB for closer review and investigation based on one or more indicators of possible fraud. Here is the full Analysis of National Insurance Crime Bureau 2010, 2011, 2012 Questionable Claim Referrals (PDF) or view the executive summary via press release.
Noteworthy News
- WCRI Releases National Medical Cost Containment Strategy Guide
- What does a rising trend in injury costs mean?
- Ceniceros: Reversing the downward spiral
- Paduda: Variation in hospital results – how to use the data
- DePaolo: The Collision of Techno-Babble and Work Comp
- NIOSH: Dangers of Bathtub Refinishing
- FMLA compliance is not as easy as the DOL says [poll results]
- How Does Your Salary Compare with Big CEOs’ Salaries?
- Workplace Violence: A Troubling Reality
- New technologies help mitigate work-alone risks
