Nancy Germond is hosting Cavalcade of Risk #93 – check it out. And while you’re at it, check out Nancy’s regular insurance column on AllBusiness.
Mark Wall’s excellent WC forum on LinkedIn – While recently attending the National Workers Compensation & Disability Conference in Chicago, I had the opportunity to meet Mark Walls who is the founder of LinkedIn’s excellent Workers’ Compensation Forum. Mark, who is a genuinely nice person as well as a commensurate professional, has created an impressive network of more than 2,400 members, which includes employers, claims adjusters, insurance carriers, third party administrators (TPAs), brokers, attorneys, risk managers, regulators, EH&S professionals, and vendors that provide service to the workers’ comp industry. The group illustrates some of the best advantages and features of social media: industry networking, active discussion boards, and news feeds to blogs and alternative media sources. Members can pose questions or topics and get feedback from other members. Plus, Mark does a great job of ensuring that posts are on-topic and he is strict about disallowing spam. To join, you need to first be a member of LinkedIn, and then you can register to join the Workers’ Compensation Forum. Hope to see you there!
The soft market and AIG – if you are wondering why the soft workers comp market persists, read Joe Paduda’s post on the implications of AIG’s price cutting – it certainly offers some clues. Of course, AIG’s pricing isn’t the only factor, but when you have an elephant in the room, it certainly can’t be ignored.
Fraud surveillance – Roberto Ceniceros talks about cuts in fraud surveillance in both the public and the private sector. He’s looking for feedback from others who are experiencing a similar trend. We’ve also heard talk about cuts in safety and loss control services offered by insurers as part of work comp policies. Any feedback on these issues? It would seem shortsighted to relax on either of these important services.
RI nightclub fire settlements – Insurance Journal covers a recent report on settlement details in the 2003 Rhode Island nightclub fire that killed 100 people and injured 200 others. More than 300 survivors and victims’ relatives sued after the fire. You can also follow some of our past coverage related to workers’ comp, or the lack of it, in this sad case: Workers’ Comp and the Station Nightclub; Avoid Comp Premiums and Pay the Price; Station Nightclub: Who Pays?; Stone Walls and Steel Bars for Business Decisions
Strip search not covered by comp – For nearly a decade, fast food chains throughout the nation were plagued by a cruel and bizarre telephonic hoax, the so-called strip search hoax. The “pranksters” who posed as detectives called fast food restaurants and retail chains and somehow convinced store managers to detain hapless employees. The managers were then guided through a series of progressively questionable and invasive actions such as strip searches of the alleged criminal employees, supposedly on behalf of the police. Sounds weird? It certainly was. In recent developments, Louise Ogborn, a McDonald’s employee and the victim in one of these cases, was awarded $6 million in damages for her humiliating ordeal. McDonald’s attorneys appealed the ruling, invoking the exclusive remedy of workers’ compensation. The Kentucky Court of Appeals disagreed, stating that “We do not find manifest injustice in the trial court’s ruling that Ogborn was not acting in the course and scope of her employment while she was held in the manager’s office.”
Posts Tagged ‘Rhode Island’
Cavalcade of Risk, Linkedin, AIG, fraud, Station Nightclub fire, & strip searches
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009Brendan Doyle: Return-to-Work Person of the Year
Friday, June 20th, 2008You probably have never heard of Brendan Doyle, a Rhode Island state trooper, but his story, as told by Amanda Milkovits in the Providence Journal, belongs in the hearts and minds of anyone involved in disability management. He exemplifies what great medicine, combined with ferocious determination and discipline, can accomplish.
Just over a year ago, he was punched to the ground by a low life named James Proulx, hitting his head on the pavement. His injuries were so severe, doctors discussed organ donation with his family. He was comatose, hooked up to a respirator, his skull shattered.
But he held on. Eventually, he was moved to Spaulding Rehabilitation Center in Boston, where doctors dismissed any notion that he would be able to return to work. He was paralyzed on his right side and suffered from double vision. But by the fall of last year, after doctors reattached a piece of his skull, Doyle noticed that his fine motor skills started to return. The double vision disappeared and he regained feeling and mobility in his right side.
Against All Odds
By this past spring, Doyle said he wanted to return to his job as a trooper: not a modified duty, desk job in the back of some precinct, but full duty. His supervisors, who supported him from day one, put him through rigorous retraining in firearms, pursuit driving, use of force techniques and through “shoot – don’t shoot” scenarios to test his reaction times. He endured the standard three week course of 13 hour days in the police academy. He passed every test with flying colors, even earning a master pin for firearms.
So against all odds, with no small element of luck, Brendan Doyle is back on the job. From the beginning of his ordeal, this was his one goal. By all rights he should have become permanently and totally disabled, drawing 100 percent of his trooper pay tax free for the rest of his life. No one would have questioned it. But Doyle refused to bow to this fate. In doing so, he exemplifies what the human spirit can accomplish despite ridiculous odds.
I would like to see a picture of Doyle, with his humble smile and crescent moon-shaped scar, posted over the desk of every ER and occupational doctor, every nurse case manager and claims adjuster – and every employer – to remind us that the goal of treatment for injured workers is return to full duty. Forget the odds. Look beyond the trauma of the incident itself and the dire prognosis. Anyone seeing Doyle in the days and weeks following his injury would have scoffed at the notion that he would ever be in uniform again. But that is exactly where he is today.
I hope never to meet Trooper Brendan Doyle: to do so would probably mean I was involved in an accident or going a little too fast on I-95 outside of Providence. Nevertheless, I will try to keep his image in mind. For all of us who work in risk management, cost control and safety, who focus on doing the right thing for injured workers, Trooper Doyle embodies the spirit and goal of our work. He is the Insider’s Return-to-Work Person of the Year.
News roundup: RTW, Ambulatory Care, Rhode Island shake-up, and more
Wednesday, April 19th, 2006Today’s must-read list: Give disabled workers every reason to remain part of your work force – an article discussing a report by the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM) on the Stay at Work/Return to Work process. The report discusses the psychological, emotional, and economic impact of disability on the individual. Read the full report: Preventing Needless Disability by Helping People to Stay Employed (PDF).
Peter Rousmaniere’s column in Risk & Insurance this month – How to Avoid Getting Scalped – a look at Ambulatory Surgical Centers and their lack of transparency in billing practices. It’s worth a read.
Rhode Island – Looks like Ohio may have some company in terms of workers comp scandals. Business Insurance reports that Governor Carcieri is calling for the termination of Beacon Mutual Insurance Company’s CEO Joseph Solomon after a recent report detailed questionable practices and preferential pricing. Insurance Journal reports that Solomon and the VP of underwriting have both been suspended without pay, at least until a meeting scheduled for today. This is a big shakeup for an organization that writes about 90% of the state’s workers comp policies. Beacon Mutual was created by the state in 1991 as a nonprofit independent corporation.
Scaffolding – In Boston, work has resumed at the site of the recent scaffolding collapse. The state is considering proposals that would assign scaffolding inspections to the Department of Public Safety, as is the case with cranes at construction sites. This political football will no doubt be tossed around for awhile. Meanwhile, a new scaffolding collapse in Milton Keynes , UK has dominated the headlines this week … another worker killed. The BBC depicts the collapses in pictures. (via rawblogXport).
Employee Mutiny – You know things are bad when your work force quits en masse, leaving only a note on the door. Hospital Impact discusses this event, and raises other issues of employee morale and work force motivation in an interesting post that we found via Rita at MSSPNexus.
Workers’ Comp and the Station Nightclub
Thursday, December 11th, 2003This is a cautionary tale for America’s small employers.
One hundred people died in the Station Nightclub fire, one of the worst tragedies in American history.
Yesterday, the brothers, Jeffrey A. Derderian and Michael A. Derderian, who owned the Station Nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island, and Daniel M. Biechele, the tour manager for the band, Great White, were each charged with 200 counts of involuntary manslaughter, two for each death. Each count carries a possible penalty of up to 30 years in prison.
The Derderians have owned the club since the year 2000. Overwhelmed by the enormity of the catastrophe, lost in the proverbial shuffle, actually, is the fact that in all that time they never purchased a workers’ compensation insurance policy, a statutory requirement.
There were 16 Station Night Club employees working the night of the fire. Four of them died. If there had been workers’ compensation insurance, the families of the dead employees would have been eligible for a meager $5,000 burial benefit. A surviving spouse would have been eligible to receive two-thirds of the deceased’s average weekly wage until death or remarriage.
Absent the insurance, the state stepped in and paid the benefits from a special fund created for such an event and funded by all employers in the state, all employers who purchase workers’ compensation, that is. The state then fined the brothers a little more than $1 million.
Asked why the Derderians never had the insurance, their attorney, Jeff Pine said, “Sometimes these things happen. A lot of businesses and other entities don’t have it.”
I find it interesting that right after the fine was announced, workers’ compensation applications in Rhode Island increased dramatically. Fancy that.
We’ll have a lot more on this in subsequent postings. Stay tuned.