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Employees with mental distress cost employers nearly $5,000 per person a year in work days lost, as well as increased turnover and health care costs, according to research from the National Safety Council and the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. Employers with workers who are experiencing mental health issues spend more than $5,500 on average in…

The demand for COVID-19 shots has stalled in the U.S., prompting some employers to implement mandates to get their staff fully vaccinated. However, experts warn that under such mandates, injuries or illnesses reported by employees from the vaccine can lead to workers compensation claims and recordable incidents on Occupational Safety and Health Administration logs. After first leaving the decision up…

States with percent-of-charge-based fee regulations or no fee schedules for hospital outpatient care saw exponentially higher costs nationwide, according to a report released Thursday by the Workers Compensation Research Institute. Cambridge, Massachusetts-based researchers compared hospital payments for a group of common outpatient surgeries in workers compensation across 36 states from 2005 to 2019, finding costs to be more than double…

The Illinois House of Representatives passed a bill that would make it easier for some first responders who acquire methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus to obtain workers compensation benefits. H.B. 3662, which unanimously passed the House on Wednesday, would amend the state’s Workers Compensation Act to create a rebuttable presumption that firefighters, emergency medical technicians and paramedics who contract MRSA did so…

A temporary university worker failed to prove that her fall on the way to turn in her timecard was work-related, an appellate court held Tuesday. In Purcell v. Illinois Workers Compensation Commission, the Illinois Appellate Court, Fourth District, Workers Compensation Commission Division affirmed an Illinois Workers Compensation Commission’s decision denying a worker’s claim for benefits after finding that she failed…

A few days after employees at Midwest Warehouse and Distribution System Inc. gathered in its Naperville, Ill., facility breakroom for a luncheon, some workers experienced symptoms consistent with coronavirus exposure. Employees began reporting to the company that they had tested positive for the coronavirus on Oct. 27, 2020. A U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigation alleges…

Despite potential obstacles posed by the coronavirus pandemic, injured workers experienced no meaningful delays in access to medical treatment under their employers’ workers’ compensation programs during the pandemic. Research from the Workers’ Compensation Research Institute (WCRI) also shows that states have varied substantially in the percentage of their workers’ compensation claims that have been Covid-19 related. “We found no change…