Posts Tagged ‘Psychosocial’

The Psychosocial Buzz Is Getting Louder

Friday, March 24th, 2017

“We know the single greatest roadblock to timely work injury recovery and controlling claim costs. And it’s not overpriced care, or doubtful medical provider quality, or even litigation. It is the negative impact of personal expectations, behaviors, and predicaments that can come with the injured worker or can grow out of work injury.

This suite of roadblocks is classified as “psychosocial” issues – issues which claims leaders now rank as the number one barrier to successful claim outcomes according to the Workers’ Compensation Benchmarking Study’s 2016 survey – and they drive up claim costs far more than catastrophic injuries, mostly due to delayed recovery.”

That’s the beginning of a new White Paper authored by friend and colleague Peter Rousmaniere and Rising Medical Solution’s Rachel Fikes. The Paper, How to Overcome Psychosocial Roadblocks: Claims Advocacy’s Biggest Opportunity, reports on Rising’s 2016 Benchmarking Survey and describes how the workers’ compensation claims management community is ever so slowly coming to realize the leading cause of delayed recovery for America’s injured workers is psychosocial in nature and that efforts to deal with this have, up to now, been woefully inadequate.

Rousmaniere and Fikes point to enlightened employers and insurers who are leading their companies to a greater acceptance of the need for competent, professional intervention to help injured workers overcome mental and emotional barriers delaying their return to employment.

They cite the work of Denise Algire, Director of Risk Initiatives and National Medical Director for Albertson Companies, a grocery chain with more than 285,000 employees. They also report on efforts by The Hartford, Nationwide Insurance and CNA.

All of the progressive actions undertaken by these organizations have one thing in common: the development of an empathic interview methodology devoted to understanding the “whole person” to discover which claims will need more intensive and specialized intervention.

At the Albertson Companies, Ms. Algire espouses the Advocacy-based model of claim management. This model emphasizes building a conversational and trust-based relationship with an injured worker through organic dialogue. She has introduced a modified Linton tool for screening injured workers for psychosocial comorbidities and has contracted with an external telephonic triage firm to conduct initial screenings.

At The Hartford, Medical Director Marco Iglesias reports 10% of claims fall into the psychosocial bucket with at least one psychosocial comorbidity, but they consume 60% of total incurred costs. He says adjusters now ask each injured worker an important question: “When do you expect to return to work?” The Hartford’s analytics indicate any answer longer than ten days is a red flag for the future.

Nationwide Insurance, under the direction of Trecia Sigle, VP of Workers’ Compensation Claims, is building a specialized team to address psychosocial roadblocks. Nationwide’s intake process will consist of a combination of manual scoring and predictive modeling, and then adjusters will refer red-flagged workers to specialists with the “right skill set.”

Pamela Highsmith-Johnson, national director of case management at CNA, says the insurer introduced a “Trusted Advisor” training program for all employees who come into contact with injured workers. CNA’s Knowledge and Learning Group helped develop the training with internal claims and nursing staff.

This White Paper adds to the now undeniable research indicating the psychosocial problem is the biggest one facing the workers’ compensation claims community today. The leading experts agree that empathy, soft talk and the advocacy-based claims model is the method of choice for helping injured workers whose claims carry a psychosocial dimension. The experts cited in the White Paper all agree that adjusters will require extensive and repetitive training to learn the new techniques.

However, all of this is a heavy lift for an adjuster community overburdened and overwhelmed with work, a group for which the average lost time claim load is often north of 150. Even with better training, they can’t do it alone. To really turn the psychosocial tide will require a well-rounded team of claims adjusters, nurses, case managers and external, well-trained clinicians working together with transparent, technologically advanced communication.

The missing links thus far are those well-trained clinicians and the advanced communication. Without these two components, the adjuster community will be sore-pressed to achieve meaningful results.

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Reader Reactions To Our Psychosocial Issues Series

Tuesday, February 7th, 2017

A number of readers wrote to us about last week’s two-part series on psychosocial issues and how they confound claim adjusters and increase costs. A few readers pointed out that we paid scant attention to the “social” in psychosocial. These adjusters and nurses wrote that too often they’d seen and handled claims where life and “societal issues” seemed to get in the way of recovery. Sue Separa, who has overseen workers’ compensation claims for more than 30 years in 40 states and jurisdictions, put it this way:

Employee loses car, loses license, loses driving privileges and can’t get to work, but still needs a source of income;

Employee is having daycare issues and needs to be home, but also needs a source of income;

Employee has a sick relative or child they need to stay with/watch, but still needs a source of income;

Employee is attending school to better themselves, has a heavy school schedule, but still needs a source of income;

Employee has a comorbid or health situation that requires medical care and possibly surgery or absence from work, and has not secured short term disability, or it is not available with the employer; 

Employee has asked for vacation time and it is denied due to no time left, or not eligible, or because someone else is off work at the same time.

And she’s right. Of course these real life situations occur. However, they’re present and happen all the time without injuries, too. They are non-physical, “social” comorbidities; things that can easily impede and delay return to work. Unless, that is, claim adjusters are trained and experienced enough, as Ms. Separa is, to dig a little deeper, find them and address them appropriately.

We also heard from our friend Robert Aurbach who wrote from Down Under to say, while he “applauds” our efforts and thinks “they are valuable,” he suggests “perhaps they don’t go far enough.” Rob believes the “problem is partly the system itself;” we create the harm I cited. As that great American philosopher, Pogo, opined on Earth Day, 1971, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” The system is iatrogenic (system caused).

Rob Aurbach also sent me a paper he authored in late 2015 for the Injury Schemes Seminar, put on bi-annually by the Australian Actuaries Institute. In the Paper (opens in pdf), titled “Better Recovery Through Neuroscience: Addressing Legislative and Regulatory Design, Injury Management and Resilience,” (bit of a mouthful that, but it won the Taylor Fry Award for the Seminar’s best paper) Rob explores Neuroplasticity, a theory dating from the 1800s and recently confirmed by functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Neuroplasticity is the process by which our brains continually rewire themselves throughout life due to environment, behavior, thinking and emotions. In short, it’s true; our brains are malleable. Rob writes that when work is disrupted through injury (or, through anything, really) for a long enough period, Neuroplasticity begins rewiring the brain to adapt to the new situation – being out of work. In other words, our brain creates a new “facilitated neural network.” This can happen in as little as 12 weeks, as Rob points out:

Timing is everything. There is a substantial research literature demonstrating that if a worker does not return to work within 12 -16 weeks, the probability of eventual return is reduced to 50% or less.

Rob Aurbach’s paper is a valuable contribution to understanding how easily a claim can deteriorate to the point where an injured person’s life is forever changed, and not for the better. I urge you to read it. It’s well-researched, well-written and profoundly thoughtful. Twenty-seven pages long, the last seven of which are endnotes and references. I found the first half of the text compelling and enlightening. His common sense recommendations that follow are pretty simple, but wickedly difficult to implement: Claim managers and adjusters should intervene early, demonstrate respect for the injured worker, promote early return to work, align incentives that encourage recovery, restrain negativity, listen attentively to the worker’s story, etc. In short, all the things managers, nurses and adjusters like Sue Separa know they should be doing, anyway. Trouble is, for these often overworked professionals, each managing a steamer trunkful of claims, there isn’t a lot of time to devote to Rob’s prescription. The iatrogenic system isn’t built to allow it.

And that’s where behavioral health clinicians and therapists, for the most part underused and undertrained, should be called on to help. Work Comp Psych Net, the New Jersey company I described last week, would be a good place to start.

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