Employers, insurers and claimants should start planning for changes to how Medicare’s liabilities are accounted for in workers compensation settlements, experts say. The changes, which will remove the reporting threshold in settlements that include Medicare set-asides and define penalty amounts, could increase the likelihood of significant fines for noncompliance and prolong settlement negotiations, they say. The Centers for Medicare &…
Indemnity benefits per claim in Illinois increased 5% in 2022, driven by a 4% increase in workers’ wages, a new study from the Workers Compensation Research Institute (WCRI) found. A 0.8-week increase in the average duration of temporary disability also contributed to the rise in indemnity benefits, the study said. The study found that Illinois also saw declining medical payments…
The probability of work-related accidents increases 5% to 6% when temperatures rise above 90 degrees, and the effect of workplace heat is stronger in the southern U.S. and in the construction industry, according to a report released Thursday by the Workers Compensation Research Institute. The report, “Impact of Excessive Heat on the Frequency of Work-Related Injuries,” used workers compensation claim…
The aging U.S. workforce is a rising concern for employers and workers compensation insurers as older worker injury claims are more likely to contain comorbidities. Older workers usually have greater expertise than younger co-workers and are injured less frequently but they often have more preexisting health issues than younger workers, making comp claims more complex. As life expectancy increases and…
Indemnity benefits per workers compensation claim grew at a “rapid” pace of 6% or more in 2022 in 16 out of 17 states analyzed by the Workers Compensation Research Institute, which said data prior to 2021 showed little change. Pegging the post-pandemic conditions as that which may have spurred the rise in indemnity benefits, WCRI said the tight labor market…
An Illinois appeals court ruled Friday that a municipal worker was entitled to workers compensation benefits after a work-related fall, finding the award proper because the man was a “traveling employee” at the time of the July 2018 incident. The Appellate Court of Illinois dismissed an appeal by the Town of Cicero, which fought a claim by blight inspector Michael…
Musculoskeletal conditions associated with aging and identified during examinations of injured workers are increasingly common, adding to the complexity of claims, experts say. These so-called degenerative conditions seen in comp claims can “become complicated because typically you have no baseline,” said Max Koonce, Memphis, Tennessee-based chief claims officer for third-party administrator Sedgwick Claims Management Services Inc. “You don’t know where…
An employee at a Wally’s Foods convenience store in Minneapolis was stabbed while trying to stop a shoplifter. Following an argument, a man was accused of shooting his coworker in the torso at packaging supply company Pak Source in Rock Island, Illinois. The husband of a manager-in-training at a McDonald’s restaurant in High Point, North Carolina, angry over how employees…
The construction sector topped the list for workplace injuries in 2023, reporting three times the number of workers compensation claims out of all industries, according to a workplace safety trends report released Monday by Texas Mutual Insurance Co. Thirty-nine percent of serious injury claims were filed by construction workers compared with 11% in mining, 11% in administrative, support, waste management…
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration said Wednesday it cited a manufacturer after discovering numerous machine safety violations at its Itasca, Illinois, plant that expose workers to amputation hazards. OSHA cited Walker Midwest LLC, a division of Ontario, Canada-based Walker Stamping, for one willful violation and 13 serious violations following a July inspection that took place after the agency…
