Workplace fatalities jumped 8.9% in 2021 from the prior year, while the fatal work injury rate increased only minimally during that same period, according to figures released Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The country saw a total of 5,190 fatal work injuries last year, up from 4,764 in 2020. The fatal work injury rate stood at 3.6…
Emergency room visits by injured workers showed “substantial variation” across 28 states, even for the same injuries, calling into question whether some state programs push the more expensive care at the onset of an injury regardless of medical necessity, according to a report released Monday by the Workers Compensation Research Institute. In 2021, emergency room utilization for initial medical services…
An Illinois appeals court has partially reversed a Workers’ Compensation Commission ruling overturning an arbitrator’s issuance of temporary total disability benefits to a retail worker injured during a December 2018 workplace accident. In McGaha v. The Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission, the Fifth District Appellate Court of Illinois on Tuesday partially overturned a May Wayne County Circuit Court decision siding with…
While cuts, falls and strains make up a large portion of workers compensation claims among restaurants, injuries from a worker’s extremities being crushed, and injuries related to mental stress and fainting are on the rise post-2020, according to an analysis published Wednesday by AmTrust Financial Services Inc. In studying injuries post-pandemic, comparing 2021 with 2019 as a baseline, AmTrust found…
Sixty percent of so-called cumulative trauma workers compensation claims involve injuries that progress over time and are indemnity-only, thus involving no medical component, according to a report released Thursday by the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau of California. Overall, 77% of indemnity cumulative trauma claims involving more than $1,000 in expenses attributed to settling and defending claims, while only 53%…
A former employee of Brandsafway claims he was wrongfully terminated for seeking worker’s compensation benefits after he was injured on the job. Plaintiff Fred Skelton filed the lawsuit in the Madison County Circuit Court against defendant Brandsafway, LLC formerly known as Safway Services, LLC, citing retaliatory discharge in violation of the Illinois Worker’s Compensation Act. According to the lawsuit, Skelton…
Acute labor shortages across the construction industry are hitting everything from quality control to worker safety, keeping busy risk engineers and others involved with construction risk management. The labor crunch can lead to work being done by less qualified or inadequately trained workers, causing mistakes that require expensive rework, often at the expense of the contractor. In other cases, there…
Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigators again cited a Schaumburg, Illinois-based excavating contractor for failure to follow federally mandated safety measures to protect workers from potentially deadly trench cave-ins. Trench collapses are among the construction industry’s most lethal hazards and a recent focus of OSHA. OSHA reported that an inspector in June observed two employees of A. Lamp Concrete Contractors…
COVID-19-related workers compensation claims fell last year compared with 2020, when the pandemic first hit the United States, but indemnity-only claims continued to represent the biggest share, a group of rating agencies said in a report released Tuesday. The average claim cost over the two-year period was $9,600, according to the report from the National Council on Compensation Insurance and…
While claim frequency in workers compensation has been flat for a decade, claim severity is increasing, and no industry is seeing it more than construction, according to panelists at the 42nd International Risk Management Institute Inc. Construction Risk Conference. “This is driven by medical advances,” said Mark Walls, vice president, communications & strategic analysis, for Safety National Casualty Corp. “They’re…
