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Self-insured employers facing the threat of COVID-19 workplace safety litigation could opt to accept infection workers compensation claims, as exclusive remedy clauses could provide better protection from expensive lawsuits later on, according to legal experts. “Liability is scary because there are no caps,” said Mike Fish, Birmingham, Alabama-based founding member of the comp defense firm Fish Nelson & Holden LLC…

More workers with lower back pain are receiving physical therapy to treat their workplace injuries, and that therapy is leading to shorter durations of disability and lower medical costs, according to a study released Tuesday by the Workers Compensation Research Institute. Researchers at Cambridge, Massachusetts-based WCRI examined 26,000 low-back workers comp claims with more than seven days of lost time…

The surge in workers compensation “mega claims” of at least $3 million continues as medical treatments and technologies advance, according to research by ratings bureaus around the country. While mega claims comprise a statistically small percentage of all workers comp claims, claims are reaching the mega threshold more quickly, primarily because of the associated costs of technological advances in medicine.…

“Mega” workers compensation claims from the construction sector comprised approximately 40% of large claims from 2001 to 2017, yet made up 20% of indemnity claims, according to research released Tuesday by six ratings agencies including the National Council on Compensation Insurance and the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau of California. Researchers analyzed comp claims that surpass $3 million in costs,…

Payments for outpatient facility services in workers compensation drove up the cost of medical payments per claim by 6.6% from 2014 through 2018, according to a report issued Thursday by the National Council for Compensation Insurance. Overall, the cost of medical payments per claim rose 7.5% during that period, NCCI reported. Comprising approximately one-fifth of medical costs, hospital outpatient payments…