Workers’ compensation claims adjusters are busier than the Ed Sullivan Plate Spinner.
Running around with one or two hundred lost time claims would make anyone dizzy, but at the recent National Workers’ Compensation & Disability Conference (NWCDC) in New Orleans, presenters tossed the frazzled spinners a few more plates to shoot up on the sticks.
The issue? Psychosocial factors delaying claim resolution.
At one well-attended session, Marco Iglesias, Medical Director for The Hartford, and Robert Hall, Corporate Medical Director for Optum, went into great detail about how psychosocial factors rear their heads in the claim process, and how they impede recovery.
For example, consider these research statistics based on a study of 75,000 claims:
Research aplenty. Solutions, not so many.
So, perhaps it’s time for a more comprehensive discussion.
To begin that, let me propose a thesis:
Our nation’s current system for treating injured workers with mental health issues is uncoordinated, overly fragmented, highly wasteful and does not focus enough on speedy return to work. There is a critical need for a more systemic approach as well as an integrated coterie of clinicians and practitioners, trained in workers’ compensation, whose goals are to provide compassionate treatment with a steady return-to-work trajectory.
The issue is compounded by the way claim adjusters, supervisors, nurses and defense attorneys view psychological issues. No one wants to "buy a psych claim," and many believe that referring a claimant for behavioral health treatment does nothing more than create a lifetime annuity for a psychologist. Time and again this view has been proven correct.
What to do about that? Ay, there’s the rub. For in that question lies a host of difficulties. These, for instance:
These are deep and difficult considerations. Later, we’ll describe one possible solution offered by a company in New Jersey, which, in the interests of full disclosure, is a Lynch Ryan client.
Tom Lynch is a principal with Lynch Ryan & Associates, a Massachusetts-based employer consulting firm. This column was reprinted with his permission from his Workers' Comp Insider blog.
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