March 31, 2008
The Best Health Care in the World: Part Five: A recap, a few questions, a conclusion and a modest proposal
This series is meant to paint a realistic, well-sourced and objective portrait of American health care early in the 21st century as compared with that of our 29 partners in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, all of us comprising the most developed democracies in the world), and to examine how workers' compensation fits into that mix. We've...March 19, 2008
The Best Health Care in the World - Part Four: Do the Statistics Tell the Whole Truth?
We have seen that America spends more on health care than other developed democracies around the world for outcomes that, on the whole, are no better than those achieved by the average OECD country. Our health care "system" perpetuates ever-increasing spending without delivering results to justify the expense. Moreover, because of our country's isolation, both geographically and culturally, few Americans...March 17, 2008
The Best Health Care in the World - Part Three: What Do We Get for the Money?
In Part One of this series, we began looking at some of the many cost disparities between group health and workers' compensation. In Part Two, we compared US health care costs with costs in the other 29 member-countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). OECD countries, all democracies, are considered the most economically advanced in the world....March 14, 2008
RTW resources from Australia
The RTW Knowledge Base Website is a free service from Australia providing research based information and links to external resources on work disability prevention. We received a notice about this site from Mary Wyatt, an Occupational Physician based in Melbourne Australia. She offered a good overview of the site's features, so we will take the liberty of using her description...March 13, 2008
The Best Health Care in the World: Part Two - What does it cost?
In 1992 I became a Trustee of a major, tertiary care, teaching hospital in Massachusetts. For Trustee indoctrination, new Trustees spent a week in a classroom learning about every facet of hospital life. One morning we were briefed by the hospital's CFO. I was astonished to learn that the hospital had 27 different billing systems, one for each insurer and...March 11, 2008
The best health care plan in America
In 1986, US workers' compensation medical costs were 44% of total incurred loss dollars. Ten years later, the percentage had grown to 48%. By 2006, medical costs amounted to 58% of total loss costs. And today, nearly a third of the way through 2008, they hover around 60%. The annual workers' comp medical cost rate of growth is nearly double...November 19, 2007
Your Government at Work – Worker injury research you can actually use
A cornerstone of Lynch Ryan’s work for more than twenty years, a long-held mantra, has been that employees who work for good employers -- employers who care for their workers and show it by the way they treat them -- report all work injuries when they happen, get expeditious treatment and return to work faster. Moreover, their injuries cost significantly...November 6, 2006
Workers comp costs and benefits - Current state rankings
Here’s a question for you: If you were to ask any employer in America how his or her workers’ compensation costs compare to similar employers in other states, what do you think the answer would be? Well, I’ve been doing that with employers I meet for a long time, and I have yet to meet one who thinks his or...June 29, 2006
Big Pharma's Charity: It's Better to Give and Receive
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...June 27, 2006
Employee compensation
How does your organization's hourly wage and benefit expenditure stack up to the national average? You can find out by comparing your costs to the most recent Employer Costs for Employee Compensation report (March 2006) from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the hourly compensation cost per civilian nonfarm worker averaged $26.86, with salaries accounting for just...January 3, 2006
Workplace trends for 2006
What's in store for the coming year? Here are the Herman Group's 2006 Workforce Trends, courtesy of Anita Campbell's Small Business Trends. They strike us as right on the money: 1. Intensifying competition for qualified workers. 2. Gradually increasing attention to employee retention. 3. Increasing investment in older workers. 4. Shift in retirement plans to lifetime lifestyle funding. 5. Continued...December 16, 2005
Harvard study: carpal tunnel not caused by computer use
Our friend Joe Paduda sent us a link to a new report issued by Harvard Medical School stating that carpal tunnel syndrome is not caused by computer use. The report disputes the conventional wisdom that carpal tunnel syndrome is a repetitive stress injury, stating that it is often incorrectly described as one. Rather, it is a compression of the median...October 10, 2005
Effective occupational medicine: opinions wanted
Want to have an impact on the future of occupational medicine? Do you purchase (or influence the purchase) of occupational medicine services for your organization? Do you manage relationships with medical service providers for your company? If so, the American College of Occupational & Environmental Medicine (ACOEM) invites your opinion via an online survey. Click here to take the survey....October 7, 2005
Results of readership survey
Thanks to all those of you who have taken our reader survey - the survey is still active if you'd like to take it, but we thought we would report on results to date. So far, we've learned that 63% of the survey respondants visit daily or several times a week; 84% rated the blog as excellent or good; 61%...August 26, 2005
NH doc under scrutiny for trying to save woman's life
Earlier this week, the Trust for American's Health issued a new report on obesity in Anmerica with the disturbing news that about 25% of American adults are obese. Health Daily News Central has more information on the details of this report. We've also previously blogged about obesity and workers comp. About the same time this report was released, the news...June 21, 2005
The Aging Workforce - Iceberg, Dead Ahead
The aging of the American workforce is a dynamic that we have been tracking closely. I can personally swear that as one ages the body begins to wear down. Oh, that this truth were not so. In my father's day, it was common for people (mostly men) to work until age 65 and then retire on the proverbial company pension...June 15, 2005
Toil and Trouble: Older Workers and Workers Comp
A couple of new studies reinforce a number of concerns that we continue to raise concerning the aging of the American workforce. NCCI has released a study (PDFs) that specifically addresses the potential impact of an older workforce on workers compensation costs. Not surprisingly, they find that older workers get injured less often than younger ones, but when they do...May 31, 2005
Left and Right Converge on Health Care Coverage
We continue to track the national crisis in health care coverage. we've blogged it before and we'll blog it again. As of 2003 about 45 million Americans lacked health insurance. Of these, there are about 20 million American workers without health coverage, which comprises a seismic undercurrent in workers compensation. Health care coverage tends to follow income: the lower your...March 1, 2005
Are Unhappy Workers at Increased Risk for Prolonged Disability?
The Conference Board, a New York-based business research group, recently issued the findings of a job satisfaction survey of American workers. The findings were picked up in newspapers around the country, including the Boston Globe. The results should be of interest -- and concern -- to workers compensation and disability carriers alike. The survey of 5,000 households found that only...December 17, 2004
Study reports black workers compensated less for back injuries
A Saint Louis University study that appears in the December issue of Pain reports that black Americans who suffer work-related back injuries are compensated less for their injuries than white people in similar situations. "The implications of these differences are sobering. Even though patients have equal access to health care through the worker's compensation system, there are substantial differences in...November 29, 2004
DOL report on work-related multiple-fatality incidents
The Department of Labor's Monthly Labor Review features an 18-page report about work-related multiple-fatality incidents (pdf). While 9 out of every 10 work-related accidents that result in death involve a single fatality, between the study years of 1995 and 1999, 10 percent of the fatal events involved multiple deaths. There were 1,109 incidents resulting in 2.949 deaths during the study...November 18, 2004
Prolonged PC use may cause glaucoma
Does heavy computer use increase the risk for glaucoma? Yes, according to a study by the University of Japan at Toho. The study was conducted with 10,000 office workers who are heavy computer users: “… the researchers found that those who were short-sighted and sat in front of computer screens for long hours were at significantly higher risk of developing/having...October 5, 2004
Applications being accepted for John Jones Scholar in Workers' Compensation Research
Are you a researcher with an interest in workers compensation? If so, you may want to submit an application to the John Jones Scholar in Workers’ Compensation Research by February 1, 2005 for a $10,000 research grant. This award was created by the Workers' Compensation Research Institute’s (WCRI) Board of Directors to recognize the many contributions of John Jones, one...September 30, 2004
Workplace deaths increased in 2003
Workplace fatalities rose in 2003 to a total of 5,559 deaths, according to the Department of Labor. Here's a breakdown from the DOL report about the industry segments with the most deaths. The construction industry had the most deaths - 1,126, followed by 805 deaths in the transportation and warehousing sector. When the number of workers in each industry was...September 8, 2004
Employer communications - an increasing credibility gap?
A Towers Perrin report entitled Is It Time to Take the SPIN Out of Employee Communication? (pdf) reveals that in a survey of 1,000 working Americans, only 51 percent believe that their company generally tells the truth in its communications to employees, and one in five employees believes that their employer generally does not tell the truth. Among the other...August 4, 2004
Health & safety news briefs
Good news for workplace safety advocates. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the New York Times, OSHA has been ordered to release company names and the worker injury and illness rates of the American workplaces with the worst safety records. This will allow reporters and the general public to identify the riskiest employers and will also...July 7, 2004
Research: outcomes for injured workers
This year's NCCI Issues Report contains a report by Richard Victor of the Workers Compensation Research Institute (WCRI) of Cambridge, MA on WCRI's ongoing study of injured worker outcomes in California, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Texas. The objective of the research is to measure key outcomes that are frequently at the heart of public policy decision making: recovery of healthsuccessful return...May 13, 2004
Cover the Uninsured Week
Thanks to Ross at The Bloviator for informing us that we are midway into the Cover the Uninsured Week, and that more than 20 million workers lack health insurance. Ross provides a link to a 57-page state-by-state analysis of Americans without health insurance (PDF) commissioned by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and conducted by the State Health Access Data...March 9, 2004
Number of uninsured workers at large employers growing
Human Resource Executive's Workindex reports that the ranks of uninsured workers at large firms - companies with 500+ workers - have been growing at a rapid rate. According to a recent report - The Growing Share of Uninsured Workers Employed by Large Firms (PDF file) - issued by the Commonwealth Fund, the proportion of uninsured workers at large firms increased...January 29, 2004
Study shows active recovery fosters return to work
A recent study on lower back pain and return to work was conducted by a Dutch research team, and the findings were unsurprising to those of us who espouse the idea of an active rather than a passive recovery whenever possible. In the study, workers with nonspecific low back pain who engaged in a graded activity program returned to regular...January 28, 2004
Worker outcomes: are some workers being marginalized?
Peter Rousmaniere has a column entitled A Voice of the Worker in Risk & Insurance that is well worth reading. He reports on the Workers Compensation Research Institute's (WCRI) study, Outcomes for Injured Workers. The research encompassed 3,000 claimants in California, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Texas. It's one of the first studies from the worker perspective, assessing recovery, return to work,...Economic downturn effects changes in health insurance coverage
Thanks to Pulse for pointing us to the study Changes In Health Insurance Coverage During The Economic Downturn: 2000 - 2002. The study reports that the uninsured population has grown by 3.8 million during that time period. Low-income Americans, particularly males and nonparents, fared the worst, as gains in public programs failed to offset lost employer-sponsored coverage. Look to the...January 12, 2004
NCCI report: frequency trending down; severity trending up
Last week, NCCI reported on a recent study on workers' compensation claim frequency and, as they reported last year, frequency continues to decline. They cite several potential reasons for this - employer safety initiatives, increased use of robotics and power assisted processes, and ergonomics, to name a few. Here is a breakdown by size of claim - note that the...December 15, 2003
Lifting guidelines and RTW
The Ohio Bureau of Workers Comp and Ohio State University have teamed up on a research project that studies back injuries and reinjuries that can occur when people return to work. As an offshoot of the research, they developed an interactive lifting resource with guidelines intended to help employers and physicians in developing realistic transitional work programs. Considering that back...October 20, 2003
Workplace deaths decline
The good news? In 2002, workplace deaths fell by 6.6% (excluding 9/11). This marks the lowest level in the ten years the census has been conducted. The bad news? Some jobs are still way too risky. The Bureau of Labor Statistics just issued its annual report on the most dangerous jobs, on-the-job fatality rates, and other work-related injury and death...October 3, 2003
