Nancy Germond, blogger at Insurance Copywriter makes a fine debut as host of this week’s Cavalcade of Risk #67. It’s a good issue. Plus, we like Nancy – we’ve linked to some of her risk management columns at AllBusiness before. Note her recent timely column: Top Ten Ways to Avoid a Santa Suit.
Other blog reads
While we tend to focus on workers comp and insurance in our blog recommendations, we read many peripheral blogs that we like so we thought we would bring a few new finds and favorites to your attention.
Through a good post on safety glasses, we’ve just discovered Assembly Blog, a web adjunct of Assembly magazine – that’s great, maybe we aren’t looking hard enough, but we haven’t discovered too many manufacturing themed blogs.
We’ve recently added Corporate Wellness Insights to our sidebar. Of recent note: Three Wellness Issues to Watch in 2009
Thoughts from Training Time is a substantive blog that we like to read now and again. As might be expected, the general theme is on training, but posts run the gamut on a variety of human resource and productivity topics.
Wally Bock’s Three Star Leadership Blog is a great filter for some of the best weekly business reading. Wally usually begins each week with a roundup of good posts he culls from the business press and often features a midweek roundup from business blogs.
We wish there weren’t a need for this blog, but unfortunately there is since homicide is one of the leading causes of death for women in the workplace. Domestic Violence and the Workplace is written by Kim Wells, Executive Director of the Corporate Alliance to End Partner Violence. It’s an important issue, and Kim highlights some of the best practice initiatives by some of the nation’s largest employers. Also on the topic, see last month’s article in Fortune: Domestic violence: Your coworker’s dark secret

Time for a blogroll and sidebar update! We’re always looking for new resources to keep things fresh – we’ve been told we have the best compilation of workers’ comp link resources on the web – we hope it’s useful to you.
Noteworthy blogs
The Safety Blog – this blog is sponsored by Safety Services Company. Since December, they’ve been offering news and tips for safety professionals. There’s really substantive information posted – a good addition to the health & safety blogosphere.
Health Blog – WSJ – reporter Jacob Goldstein spearheads this Wall Street Journal blog that focuses on health and the business of health. Scott Hensley an erstwhile WSJ reporter on the drug industry is also a frequent contributor.
GoozNews – We’ve linked to Merrill Goozner’s site through Health Wonk Review before, but hadn’t added him to the sidebar. “Gooz” is an author and former journalist for some of the nation’s premier news publications – in the area of health policy, he always has something interesting to say.
GotSafety Blog – This appears to be more of a safety news aggregator than a blog, culling excerpts and links from various places around the Web.
Tools
Does this Workers Compensation settlement require a Medicare approval or set-aside? (PDF) – this handy flow chart offers guidelines on when and where Medicare Set-Aside are required.
An Unhealthy America – “the economic burden of chronic disease” – Over 162 million cases of seven common chronic diseases — cancers, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, stroke, mental disorders, and pulmonary conditions — were reported in the U.S. in 2003. A clickable map shows how states compare based on the prevalence of these diseases.

If you have bloggers on the payroll, both you and they may be at risk for work injuries – or even death! At least that’s the word according to a recent article by Matt Richtel in the New York Times, In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop. Richtel describes a growing work force of sedentary workers who toil around the clock under great competitive stress to cover the latest news, “a digital-era sweatshop.” While many bloggers are either non-paid or self employed, many are employees or contractors. Some work on a piece-work basis paid by the post and others depend on pay-per-click advertising.
The article cites the examples of two prominent bloggers who recently died of heart attacks, noting that while the deaths cannot be definitively linked to blogging, certain aspects of the blogger lifestyle can lead to weight gain, inactivity, poor nutrition, and sleep disorders. Plus, many suffer stress and blogger burnout.
Of course, the story has been buzzing through the blogosphere to mixed reactions. There is no shortage of bloggers having fun with the story (Five Brooklyn Bloggers Die Over the Weekend, Latest Victims of New, High-Tech Disease; The NYT Covers Blogging) – bloggers can be a very snarky and cynical group. But while many fault the story for being a bit on the dramatic side, it raises some good points that employers should consider: sedentary workers have unique health risks. Of course, this isn’t limited to bloggers – it also includes IT workers, telemarketers, assemblers, managers, typists, receptionists, office workers – just to name but a few. Sedentary work environments can contribute to obesity, diabetes, circulatory problems, deep-vein thrombosis, musculoskeletal disorders, and other health problems.
While we haven’t seen any workers comp claims for blogging yet, employers need to keep an eye out for sedentary workers, particularly any home-based teleworkers, to ensure that health risks are mitigated and that workers comply with health and safety standards. Set an expectation that work be punctuated with periodic breaks for activity or exercises and ensure that workstations have good ergonomic design. Blogger LifeDev shares some other pointers for keeping web workers healthy.
And as for us hard working bloggers at Workers Comp Insider, we offer assurances that we are not pulling all nighters to update the blog or struggling to feed our families on a click-by-click basis. But after this article, I am wondering if our readers’ insatiable demand for the latest workers comp news might have something to do with my recent 10 pound weight gain.

Ernesto the Insurance Geek is hosting this week’s Cavalcade of Risk at InsuranceYak.com. He has sifted through a whopping 18 submissions, thereby providing easy access to anyone with an interest in risk – and that is just about all of us. Check it out.

Cavalcade of Risk is up, hosted by MyWealthBuilder. It’s a delectable potpourri ranging from personal risk (auto and health insurance choices, avoiding Alzheimers through diet) to global issues (a history of the subprime mortgage mess). The wide ranging subject matter reminds us that risk management is something we all do, every day, even if we limit our thinking to professional implications. This week’s Cavalcade is fun and informative – well worth checking out.

 Today marks the fourth anniversary of Workers’ Comp Insider. Since the Insider was the first insurance blog, and by extension the first workers’ comp blog, in the nation, I thought that perhaps a moment of reflection might be in order. Jon gave his thoughts on “why we blog” a few days ago, but I wanted to share my thoughts on the matter.
In July, 2003, Julie Ferguson, who knows more about blogs than any three people I know, came into my office and said, “Tom, I think Lynch Ryan should create a weblog.”
Up until that time, it seemed to me that two kinds of people had blogs, rabidly radical political reporters who posted five or six times a day whenever anyone in Washington sneezed, and teenagers who wanted the world to know what they ate for breakfast. So, when Julie proposed that we join the crowd all I could say was, “Why on earth would we want to do that?” Thus began my education. Over the next few days Julie persuaded me that this was a natural for Lynch Ryan, because we had always been innovators and path-finding pioneers. Blazing the trail of insurance blogging would continue that tradition. Plus, fostering open communication between employer, employee, physician and insurer has always been one of our core missions. A blog would be the perfect medium to take that communication to an even higher level.
We went to see Chris Miller, our Internet technology guru, from Artefact Design in Worcester, MA. We said, “Chris, how’d you like to build a blog?” I think, initially, he wanted to run away, because Chris is a corporate technology specialist, and at the time there were no corporate blogs – anywhere. But, after thinking about it for a bit, he said, “Sure, why not.”
Julie discovered that inexpensive software was available to build the blog, so we anted up the licensing fee and went to work. It was Julie, too, who came up with the name, “Workers Comp Insider.” I thought it was a bit long, but, once again, she convinced me, and on 17 September 2003, the Insider was born.
That first entry arrived with a whimper, not a bang. The topic was October Events, and it was about eight lines long. Not particularly auspicious for the first insurance blog entry in America, but, then again, neither was “Watson, come here. I need you,” another communications first.
We didn’t start to count readers until February 2004. That month, we had about 75 readers per entry, and most of those were family and friends. It’s since grown to closer to 20,000 and seems to keep growing a little bit nearly every month.
The entries have changed, too. We discovered that we had quite the writer in Jon Coppelman, our resident Ivy Leaguer (Columbia, in case you were wondering). Jon is the one who set the tone for entries that more closely resemble thoughtful, well-sourced op-eds with a tiny hint of attitude. His informed and colorful posts have developed quite a following.
Since that first entry in 2003, there have been more than 800 others spanning 15 categories. Julie has created and refined our endless sidebar, and it’s become the best workers’ compensation reference library in the world. Along the way, we’ve met and come to know and respect many others who’ve joined the workers comp blogosphere. For instance, Jordan Barab, at Confined Space, who showed us what passion for safety really is; Joe Paduda, at Managed Care Matters, who brilliantly bridges the workers’ comp and health care fields; and Peter Rousmaniere’s Working Immigrants, a blog that covers an important and timely topic. We’re also proud to have played a role in helping to create and support Health Wonk Review, the premier health policy carnival or “aggregator.” And, similarly, we’re proud of our affiliation with Cavalcade of Risk. These carnivals help to foster community and promote our industry.
Early on, we decided not to allow advertising on the Insider. We wanted to keep it pure, the message focused. Every once in a while, we reconsider that (Google calls every month, or so), but, so far, we’ve held firm.
So, four years in, we think we’ve created something good, something valuable, something that helps and supports the larger community. We thank you, our readers, for your loyalty as well as your comments (yes, even when you disagree with us – we believe that if we can’t defend our position, we don’t deserve to hold it). But, most of all, we thank you for your constant encouragement over these last four years. You make us want to make the Insider ever better, the best that it can be. I promise we’ll keep trying to do that.

Congratulations to Peter Rousmaniere on his one year “blogiversary” – it’s been just over a year since he launched Working Immigrants to serve as resource for the exchange of information and ideas about the business of immigrant work: employment, compensation, legal protections, education, and mobility. To commemorate his one year mark, he’s compiled a post listing notable entries from the first year of his blog, a “greatest hits,” of sorts.
Those who follow the blog regularly are aware that Peter is diligent about tracking research reports and public policy matters, and his blog has become an authoritative resource and repository for facts and data on the topic of immigrant workers. His “notable posts” entry serves as a handy cheat sheet on such matters as the size of the illegal work force, where illegal workers work, what the economic impact of the illegal work force is, and much more.
Thanks for an invaluable resource, Peter, and here’s to many more years of blogging!

When we launched this blog some three plus years ago, finding related topical blogs was quite the task – the landscape was fairly barren. But it seems that nearly every week now, we are discovering terrific weblogs that are either new or that we just hadn’t found before. We thought we’d share a few of our recent discoveries:
Effect Measure – according to this blog’s “about” page, “the editors are senior public health scientists and practitioners whose names would be immediately recognizable to many in the public health community,” but who choose to blog anonymously to allow maximum freedom or expression. Topical matter revolves around far-ranging issues related to public health matters and epidemiology, and it’s quite a fascinating read. See the recent post on Polonium-210 poisoning. which offers informed commentary about potential public health risks that goes beyond the mainstream news snippets. Another post of interest to any who may be keeping an eye on potential pandemics is the post entitled cholera, bird flu and humility in science, which discusses John Snow’s search for the cause of cholera in Victorian London and the theory of poultry as a vector for the spread of bird flu today. We were also interested in the post on construction scaffolding spam in New York. In addition to being illegal and a public nuisance, these posters and advertisements are often a public safety hazard: “Often these oversized parapets are a safety hazard because they catch the wind like giant sails, making the entire structure more likely to collapse.”
Enterprise Decision Management – this is a weblog by James Taylor and colleagues at Fair Isaac. The blog focus is on the latest uses of business rules and decision automation, covering such topics as Business Activity Monitoring, Business Agility, Compliance, and Business Process Management. James recently posted about the LA Times article on the changing face of risk, which Jon Coppelman blogged about here last week. His recent post about Enterprise Fraud discusses a recent Towers Perrin report and adds his perspective.
Health Affairs Blog – we cited this blog once before when it was just launching, but we thought we would point it out again now that it seems to have its sea legs. This is the weblog adjunct to the respected Health Affairs Journal. Currently, many of the posts and essays revolve around health and human rights since this was the theme of November’s gathering of 13,000 attendees at the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting in Boston. The most recent post informs us that more than half the uninsured can’t afford health coverage and are ineligible for public programs. The post offers free limited-time access to an Urban Institute research report on this topic.