A building company fired one of its carpenters to send a message to other employees to not file a workers’ compensation claim, a lawsuit states. LDC Homes, which is based in Edwardsville, terminated the employment of plaintiff Randy Klocke on June 13, according to the suit filed Nov. 15 in Madison County Circuit Court. Klocke had worked for the company…
A provider of services to rehabilitating injured workers, MedRisk Inc. has seen post-surgical physical therapy cases drop by 26% in the last five years, according to an industry trends report the company released Thursday. For its annual report, King of Prussia, Pennsylvania-based MedRisk examined recent changes, including relevant legislation, regulation and research, scouring its own data and other industry reports…
McDonald’s Corp employees on Thursday sued the fast food giant and several of its franchisees in Chicago over a store redesign that staffers say has made it easier for angry customers to leap over the counter and attack them. The suit, filed in Illinois’ Circuit Court of Cook County by 17 Chicago-area McDonald’s workers, claims McDonald’s has failed to protect…
The ever-present immigration debate continues to spill into the workers compensation industry, with undocumented workers who are injured on the job left to consider whether to pursue medical care and benefits at the risk of arrest and deportation, experts say. Case law and state statutes vary widely regarding what benefits may be afforded to an injured undocumented worker, and these…
Dean Foods was ordered to pay $3.3 million in punitive damages after an Illinois jury found that the company retaliated against an employee who filed workers’ compensation claims. The jury found that Dean Foods refused to call Richard Jankowski back to work after his on-the-job injury and after he refused work that exceeded his medical restrictions, the Northwest Herald reported….
A former worker for Rock Island County, Illinois, once accused of accessing a co-worker’s computer, will receive thousands of dollars in a settlement with the county, including almost $26,000 for a workers’ compensation claim. Rock Island County board members this week approved the settlement, on the condition that Ronna Baney never seeks work with the county again, according to a…
High rates of employee turnover and a young workforce may be behind increases in workplace injuries reported in the retail sector, but male employees and aging workers are cost drivers in retail workers compensation, according to two reports released in November detailing injury and illness rates for retail workers in 2018. Occupational injury and illness rates for all industries have…
A lack of transparency in workers compensation pharmacy continues to be an issue for much of the industry, according to a CompPharma study released Tuesday. Opioid prescriptions and overall pharmacy spend declined between 2017 and 2018, reported Maggie Valley, North Carolina-based CompPharma in its 16th annual Survey of Prescription Drug Management in Workers Compensation study. However, 83% of the survey…
Compared with rising medical costs, cash benefits paid to injured workers are continuing to decline, which experts peg to safer workplaces curbing injury severity and time away and legislative changes that make it tougher to claim workers compensation among the reasons. “We’ve been doing an outstanding job in modernizing workers compensation and taking a lot of waste and abuse out…
The average medical payment per claim with more than seven days of lost time in Illinois was more than 15 percent higher than the median of 18 states studied, according to a recent study by the Workers Compensation Research Institute (WCRI). For 2017 claims (at 12 months), the average medical payment per workers’ compensation claim was 15 percent higher than…
