Posts Tagged ‘incentives’

Flighty Health Wonk Review and sundry other news blurbs

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

Jaan Sidorov has an air travel themed Health Wonk Review posted over at Disease Management Care Blog, which he calls “frequent flyer miles for your brain.” There’s a roundup of assorted news on the health care policy front ranging from a post on the growth of MinuteClinics to a look at hospital quality surveys. Get your dose of the news from some of the brightest braniacs in the health policy blogosphere.
Here are a few other health-care related news items we noted in our travels: Katharine Van Tassel of HealthLawProfBlog posts the disturbing news revealed via a survey that 36% of responding physicians don’t believe in reporting impaired colleagues. And at Managed Care Matters, Joe Paduda talks about the results of a Kaiser Health Tracking Poll that demonstrates the power of mis-information: “Half of seniors (50%) say the [heathcare reform] law will cut benefits that were previously provided to all people on Medicare, and more than a third (36%) incorrectly believe the law will “allow a government panel to make decisions about end-of-life care for people on Medicare.”
The Weekly Toll – If you haven’t visited in awhile, stop by The Weekly Toll to read about US workers who died on the job this past week. Many seasonal hazards are represented with a high toll of tractor and farming-related fatalities and construction-related deaths in this week’s grim list. And the list does not include the 8 employees of Hartford Distributors who were killed by a coworker.
Whistleblowers – Michael Fox of Jottings By An Employer’s Lawyer tell us that the difference between cloth and leather gloves is just over $1 million in his post about a Maine court’s ruling in favor of a whistleblower who was terminated after making complaints about safety and working conditions. Maine courts aren’t the only ones who are taking a dim view of retaliation against employees who report safety problems: at Today’s Workplace, Mike Hall posts that OSHA takes whistleblowers seriously and has established a website to offer a Whistleblower Protection Program.
Teen workers – Elizabeth Cooney writes about young employees who face injury or even death on the job in an article in the Boston Globe. Teens often are employed in some of the most dangerous jobs and have little in the way of training, as evidenced by the fact that the nonfatal injury rate for 15- to 17-year-olds in the United States was 5.2 per 100 full-time equivalent workers per year, double the rate for adults 25 and older. She discusses research from the state’s Teens at Work initiative, which revealed that of “208 teens under age 18 who had been injured at work from 2003 through 2007, about half said they had no safety training. About 15 percent said there was no supervisor on site when they were hurt. Almost a quarter said they had no work permit.”
Remarkable storyChrissy gets a new face from Work Comp Complex Care: “…her story of recovery is incredible on several levels – for the medical technology involved; for the reminder that dedicated health care professionals have the power to make a huge difference in a patient’s quality of life; and for the grace and attitude of the woman who suffered a devastating, life-changing injury and did not let it defeat her.”
Protecting football players – In Hitless or Witless?, Skip Rozin of WSJ.com discusses new NFL safeguards to protect football players from serious head injuries. Long overdue, and more is needed. The biggest hurdle will be overcoming the culture. As Rozin puts it “One of the biggest obstacles here is the athletes’ code of playing hurt.”
Nursing shifts – A new study from the University of Maryland-Baltimore reveals that long shifts pose health hazards for nurses – and may increase the risk to patients, as well. Study authors said that “the most common problems with an overemphasis on 12-hour shifts are needle-stick injuries, musculoskeletal disorders, drowsy driving, and other health breakdowns related to sleep deprivation.”
Legal briefs – In South Carolina, the court ruled that free living quarters offered as inducement for employment are considered wages. In a case involving horseplay, an Iowa court ruled in favor of a butt-shaking employee on appeal. A Washington court found that a fitness for duty test did not violate the ADA.
OSHA – Dwayne Towles of Advanced Safety Health News Blog warns employers that OSHA is scrutinizing safety incentive programs and may be asking for any written policies or details of any contests or promotions. They are looking for programs that might discourage employees from reporting injuries. Towles offers his thoughts for how to handle matters should OSHA come calling. And while on the topic of OSHA visits, SafetyNewsAlert offers additional suggestions in prepping for an inspection: top 10 dos and don’ts for OSHA inspections from 2 OSHA inspectors.

Injuries at the gym: compensability, incentives, and wellness

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Roberto Ceniceros blogs about the New York appeals court ruling in Frank P. Torre v. Logic Technology, which awarded workers comp benefits to an employee for an injury sustained in the gym. Usually, injuries sustained in extracurricular activities aren’t covered by workers comp, but there are exceptions, such as when injuries occur during “mandatory attendance” events or while an employee is on business travel (see our past posts: Mandatory fun: when recreational activities are compensable and When play becomes work, or the case of the traveling employee).
On first glance, a case like this might seem open and shut. The employee was on his own time at the gym – the injury did not appear to arise out of and in the course of employment. But on closer examination, the court apparently determined that gym participation was furthering the employer’s interest for the networking potential. (Is gym the new golf?) When it is determined that an employer has derived significant business benefit from an activity – such as interacting with clients and prospects – then an activity may be compensable.
The courts also noted that the employer encouraged and sponsored this activity. In this case, the sponsorship entailed reimbursement for membership fees. One has to wonder what kind of chilling effect a ruling like this could have on wellness programs. Employers frequently incent employees by paying for or supplementing gym membership, exercise programs, and weight loss or smoking cessation programs. Some companies offer financial incentives for participating in wellness programs or disincentives such as increased cost for insurance for not participating.
This type of endorsement and sponsorship can be tricky when it comes to workers comp. In days gone by, sponsorship generally referred to softball or bowling teams and employers could take some steps top mitigate risks. But as employers become more aggressive about wellness programs in an effort to control health care costs and these wellness programs become more ingrained in the corporate culture, does the compensability exposure increase? Some of the variables that have come into play in determining compensability are the location and time of the activity – is the gym on the employer’s premises? Does the activity take place during work hours? Another factor is how strongly the company encourages participation and whether participation is purely voluntary. If a corporate culture is such that it so strongly endorses an activity, the issue of whether participation is truly voluntary could be up for debate.
Comorbidities like obesity and diabetes have been shown to have an impact on claim frequency and severity so it would appear that wellness programs would have a positive net effect on workers comp costs. But good intentions can often have bad outcomes. Take the concept of programs that heighten worker awareness about safety and incent workers for best practices – that may sound great on the surface, but The New York Times recently reported on safety incentive programs that ran headlong into the law of unintended consequences.

Big Pharma’s Charity: It’s Better to Give and Receive

Thursday, June 29th, 2006

Let’s say someone offers to pay you to do some research about their product. You set up a non-profit research entity and deposit their hefty check. What would your goal be: to prove the product ineffective? to discourage people from using it? Not likely. But how would you determine the extent to which the source of your funds contaminates the research? Would it help clarify matters if the donor gave you some stock in the company and paid you to educate other doctors about their product?
If you like murky waters, you’ll love big pharma’s contributions to the charitable trusts set up by docs around the country. In a fascinating article by New York Times reporter Reed Abelson (registration required), we read that charities established by doctors are the recipients of money to fund research: not research in the abstract, but research pertaining to the use of products manufactured by the donors themselves. This arrangement, while not inherently illegal, is loaded with potential conflicts of interest. Call it business as usual in the world of medicine.
When Charity and Profits Intersect
Abelson writes about Dr. Maria Rosa Costanzo, who made a presentation to cardiologists at a conference in March. She touted a $14,000 blood filtering device, which her research demonstrated was more effective (albeit more expensive) than intravenous diuretic drugs at removing excess fluid from patients with heart failure.
Although outside researchers raised questions about the study’s conclusions, the doctor was convinced. “We believe these results challenge current medical practice and recommendations.” She predicted many patients might benefit. Dr. Costanzo did disclose to the audience that she was a paid consultant with stock in the device’s maker, a Minnesota company called CHF Solutions. But she omitted another potentially important detail: CHF Solutions was also one of the largest donors to the nonprofit research foundation that had overseen the study. The company contributed about $180,000 in 2004.
In addition, Dr. Costanzo did not bother informing her listeners that the nonprofit entity conducting the research, the Midwest Heart Foundation, was in turn an arm of the for-profit medical group outside of Chicago where Dr. Costanzo and more than 50 of her fellow doctors treat heart patients — in many cases using products and drugs made by CHF Solutions and other big donors to their charity. Although the CHF Solutions filter has not yet won wide acceptance across the country, for physicians at Dr. Costanzo’s medical group, it is the device of choice.
If you check out the foundation’s website, you’ll see that they promote their ability to “offer our patients access to the most progressive cardiovascular treatments and preventative strategies, giving them the same opportunities as patients at university hospitals.” In other words, patients can access the latest technologies, even before they have been formally approved by the FDA. As good as this sounds, I would be surprised if the doctors disclose their financial interests to their patients. These patients might have second thoughts if they knew that the research is potentially biased from the outset.
Contaminated Thinking?
The more the Insider probes the decision-making process in medicine, the more questions we have. Why do doctors prescribe some drugs more than others? Why has oxycontin proved so popular among doctors treating workplace injuries? Why do drug companies hire ex-cheerleaders (with no background in science) to sell drugs to doctors? Do doctors think about the potential conflict between their own financial interests and the products they recommend to their patients? The ultimate question, of course, is whether patients are getting the best possible treatment, with the most effective medications, or whether the interests of the patients are subordinated to the financial interests of the doctors.
There are no easy answers. We like to think of charity and good medicine as matters of the heart. But in the world of American medical care, when you scan the doctor’s chest, you just might see something that looks less like a heart and more like a wallet.

Exclusive remedy, “bad faith” claims, and the $12 million lawsuit

Friday, January 23rd, 2004

Exclusive remedy generally protects an employer from a lawsuit. If an employee suffers a work related injury, the employer provides a state-regulated schedule of benefits to cover medical care and lost wages during recovery. In exchange for these benefits, the employee forfeits the right to sue. Workers compensation becomes the sole or exclusive legal remedy. Often, this protection is extended to insurers who are acting as agents for the employer.

However, there are exceptions. One exception is bad faith on the part of the insurer. A successful bad faith suit might be triggered by an insurer’s nonpayment of claims, mass denial of claims, or the like.
This week, a woman in South Dakota just secured a $12 million award for a bad faith claims practice, most of it in punitive damages. The claim involved the denial of about $8,000 in medical bills for a carpal tunnel injury. The original grounds for denial centered around compensability and whether the injury arose out of and in the course of employment.

Her insurer said the denial occurred because “there was a lack of proof that her hand problems were caused by her work” and further suggested that “her hand problems were likely the result of a 1998 home injury, not her work in the kitchen of the nursing home.”

A determination of work-relatedness and compensability are huge issues in many repetitive stress injuries, and if this claim dispute had ended there, the claim might have stayed within the realm of the state workers comp authority to uphold or deny. But in this case, the insurer’s claims handling practice was the smoking gun that gave rise to a charge of bad faith, opening the door to a suit.

” … the case centered around a Travelers Insurance incentive program that offered bonuses to claims workers who lowered payouts on claims. Called the Claim Professional Incentive Program, it offered workers end-of-year bonuses of as much as 20 percent of their pay if they reduced overall payouts from one year to the next.
Abourezk argued that the program created an improper conflict of interest for claims adjusters, who are supposed to be motivated by fairness to claimants, not cost control for insurance companies.”

The judgement will be reviewed by a higher court so the punitive award may or may not stand, but it serves as a cautionary tale to insurers — who are, after all, essentially finance companies — that managing a workers compensation claim is not simply the exercise of processing paper in the most cost efficient way possible, but the response to a human event. In our experience, keeping the focus on the person rather than the dollars generally results in the most favorable outcome by whatever measures you use for success.