Nearly one of four people aged 64 to 75 are still at work – and the number is skyrocketing, with more Baby Boomers who reach retirement age staying in the workplace. The good news: Older workers have a lower injury rate. The bad news: Their injuries tend to be more serious and require more time away from work.
Senior workers have specific safety issues. Their retention is often shorter, they’re more easily distracted, have slower reaction time, declining vision and hearing, and a poorer sense of balance. These physical limitations lead to specific types of injuries for older workers, ranging from falls to accumulated injuries after years of doing the same task What’s more, they sometimes deny their deteriorating abilities, which can lead to them to trying to work past their new limits.
Indicators that older workers might need accommodations can be physical (fatigue or tripping), psychological/emotional (loss of patience or irritability), numbers and patterns of sick days, or more frequent minor injuries or near misses.
You can help protect your senior workers by:
- finding ways for them to work smarter, not harder
- decreasing activities that require exertion, such as working in heat or cold or climbing ladders
- adjusting work areas with better lighting, reduced noise, fewer obstacles, and less need to bend or stoop
- redefining standards of productivity
- learning the limitations of older workers, perhaps by conducting annual hearing or vision tests
Make sure that safety culture becomes an institutional value for all employees. For example, when on-the-job feedback indicates that an older worker is having trouble, don’t fire the person. This will discourage honest input from employees who might feel responsible for their co-worker’s loss of employment.
For more information on making your workplace safer for older employees, feel free to get in touch with us.
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Unfortunately, you can’t actually see chronic pain. You can talk to someone who physically looks fine, yet is claiming they can barely stand up. Since pain is felt differently by different people, medical professionals and laypeople alike have difficulty categorizing and defining the more severe injuries. This leads to confusion and sometimes outright fraud. Let’s look at how pain is defined by using a specific case study.
A Question of Proof
How injured do you have to be to claim injury? Do you have to be constantly writhing in agony or is it only when you make specific motions? These are specific questions that get a bit touchy. Recently, a man who filed for compensation claimed that he needed a wheelchair but was then shown to be out of his home shopping without it (and seemingly without pain) through video surveillance.
They also had him on camera performing a number of other activities as well. He was arrested with the possibility of up to five years in jail. Since the amount paid out due to his injury was more than a half million dollars, it’s certainly brought about some attention in his area of Florida. The man was a deputy there, and was injured when bending to get his laptop from the trunk of his police cruiser in 2007.
After that, he went through surgery and stated that he couldn’t walk, drive or bend, which has then been shown to be false by videos. He states that he had always been consistent in reporting his pain to be inconsistent because no two days are alike. He says that while the video may show him driving and running errands, he can only do so in limited ways. He claims his whole life is a mess, with his job ripped out from under him and expenses piling up. It’s now up for the courts to decide who has the better claim and what will happen.
Employer Tips
No employer wants to follow their employee around constantly to check up on their progress and verify the truth in their claims. Also, it’s difficult to accuse someone who’s experienced severe injuries of trying to game the system. However, sometimes it’s necessary with the case of chronic pain to be more involved. Medical professionals have been shown consistently to raise costs without cause in certain areas where they have direct financial incentives to do so as well.
Through questions and visits, you can start to see the character of the person behind the claim as well as the treatment they’re receiving. If you do suspect foul play on either side, then your insurance company will be more than happy to help. After all, they stand to lose out on fraudulent claims too.
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Basic health interventions can help your business lower short-term disability rates, while reducing your employees’ time away from work. That’s the bottom line of a nationwide study of 118,000 employees by CIGNA, a major health services company.
CIGNA found that these measures, combined with predictive analytics, cut disability rates by 15% among employees at high risk of suffering disability within in the next 12 months. (The study defined “high risk” as a 10% or greater probability of becoming disabled during this period).
“By identifying workers at high risk of future short-term disability and providing individualized intervention that includes coaching, incentives, and other outreach, our study shows that the onset of disability absence can be reduced measurably, benefiting employers and employees alike,” says Dr. Robert N. Anfield, chief medical officer for CIGNA’s Disability business. Future studies will deal with the impact of intervention on the length of short-term disability, return-to-work rates, and total medical costs.
The company’s Absence Prediction and Prevention program establishes an intervention, led by a nurse/health advocate, that provides:
- Early identification of workers at high risk for future short-term disability.
- Proactive outreach to these employees.
- Clinical Assessment.
- A range of disability absence prevention strategies.
By proactively identifying employees who might be having health problems before their condition worsens and they need to leave work, you can help workers stay healthy and potentially prevent or lessen the impact of injuries or illness – which translates into lower absenteeism, higher productivity, and a healthier bottom line.
It makes sense to develop an absence prevention program that emphasizes preventive health safety training. As always, we stand ready to offer our advice.
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By decreasing work time lost from to job-related injuries and illnesses, Return-to-Work (RTW) programs can reduce your insurance costs (Workers Compensation, Disability, and Medical insurance), strengthen workplace morale, boost productivity – and help protect you against ADAAA litigation.
Here are ten common mistakes by businesses when using RTW:
- Failure to manage the higher number of employees covered by the ADAAA. An expanded definition of disability has increased the number of employees under the ADA to the point that some attorneys advise against fighting disability claims.
- Insisting on employee release to “full duty” before returning to work. This raises Workers Comp costs and the possibility of the employee not returning to work when medically possible.
- Ignoring co-morbidities. Health issues that complicate or delay an employee’s recovery (such as diabetes, obesity, and hypertension) can increase Comp claims.
- Failure to commit the necessary budget or resources. The costs of absences and non-compliance with government rules is usually far higher than that of implementing an RTW.
- Reluctance to set transitional assignments because employees “might get reinjured.” It’s even riskier to have them stay at home and develop a “disability attitude” that extends the absence and boosts costs.
- Failure to distinguish “light duty” from “transitional work.” The ADAAA permits employers to reserve less physically demanding or “light-duty” jobs for those with work-related disabilities – and these jobs should be distinct from transitional tasks.
- Relying on physicians to guide the RTW process. Although physicians are medical experts, they’re not familiar with workplace policies, job demands, and the availability of transitional work.
- Failure to understand overlapping and conflicting laws. The clashing requirements of insurance companies and state and local governments can be a nightmare.
- Inability to focus on the goal. An Integrated Benefits Institute study ranked a focus on the employee’s job as the major success factor in successful RTW programs.
- Believing that Workers Comp settlements resolve other liabilities. One size does not fit all.
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Third-Party Administrator (TPA) adjusters form the front line of defense against unnecessary claims expenses, including such traditional cost drivers as fraud or opioid pain medication addiction. They’re the ones who determine how soon employees will mend and return to the job, the length of claims, and whether closing a claim will require additional resources, such as attorney involvement. It makes sense that the more closely you monitor the adjusters of your company’s TPA, the lower your Workers Comp claims costs – and premiums.
However, adjusters today are running on overload more than ever. In addition to managing larger caseloads, they face growing real-time information demands, increasing communication speed, and expanding regulations – which distract them from such cost-control practices as staying in contact with injured workers. Says one claims adjustment expert, “The fastest way of getting an injured employee to hire an attorney is making them feel like you don’t really care about their injury. So you end up with a lot more claims than necessary going to attorneys, which leads to higher claim costs.”
It makes sense to work closely with your TPA adjuster by following these guidelines:
- Interview adjusters before they’re assigned to your company.
- Review the adjuster’s claims notes on a regular basis.
- Audit the TPA’s services periodically to make sure that the adjuster is meeting your expectations.
- Develop close relationships with claims examiners and their supervisors.
We’d be happy to work with you and your TPA adjuster on keeping tabs on your Workers Comp claims costs. Please feel free to get in touch with us.
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Some companies employ workers who work alone or in remote areas where injuries and illnesses can occur, resulting in delays in emergency response or medical assistance. They include people who work outside normal business hours, such as janitors, security guards, special production, plant maintenance or repair staff, delivery truck drivers, and others. Protecting the safety of these lone or remote workers isn’t always easy – but it’s your responsibility.
In some cases, you must monitor the exposure of these workers to identify potential hazards, assess the risks of injury or illness, and take steps to eliminate or control them. Bear in mind that some high-risk activities have safety regulations which require at least one other person to do the job, such as confined space work (defined by OSHA regulations) or electrical work at or near exposed live conductors.
If you have any employees out in the field or working alone, consider what safety measures to take to protect their well-being and security. A well-thought-out safety program for these employees is an essential first step. Hazard control measures might include:
- Safety Awareness information.
- Training.
- Supervision.
- Protective Equipment.
- Communication and Monitoring devices.
Take steps to make sure that these safety control measures remain in effect – and review your plan at regular intervals by doing a risk assessment in areas where employees work alone.
As your professional insurance agents, it’s our responsibility to help you keep all of your workers safe at all times. Give us a call at any time to discuss how we can help.
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