Workers Compensation Conundrum in the Peace Garden State
North Dakota has a Workers Compensation Conundrum. One of my prior posts addressed some of the problems with North Dakota‘s Workers Comp system. I think there now may be a problem larger than the ones they tried to fix with multiple audits of their WSI. The WSI paid over $160,000 for an overpriced and underperforming audit. I, which I rarely do, would stake my reputation on it.
We were given a Request for Proposal along with other organizations that do Workers Comp claims file audits. The number that was supposed to be considered was 30,000 claims over the last few years. The provider and I used the term loosely and reviewed little more than 350 files. Using straight division, that would be 350/30,000 files. That totals an unconscionable 1.17% of the files. NO JUSTIFIABLE CONCLUSIONS CAN BE DRAWN ON THAT SMALL A % OF WORKERS COMP files. As a long-time student of statistics, and as the industry standard dictates, the provider could not have drawn one iota of any type of recommendation. The number of Workers Comp files that needed to be reviewed should have been 3,000 – 4,000.
The cost of the project was astounding. It was about 100% larger than most providers would have charged. The bidding for the project left it to the bidder to figure out what was a statistically significant number of files. Quite a few promising companies did not even bid due to the sheer volume. A number should have been published by ND to make sure that there was a level playing field, which there was not.
The time taken to do the project was longer than allowed, which once again pushed out the small companies, as the RFP said the project had to be completed in a very short time, without question.
I am aghast that ND took this lackluster (at best) Workers Comp file review and is now drawing numerous conclusions from it. The file review was at a minimum of 2,650 files short of being able to draw any conclusions. The minimum standard for the industry is 10% of the files. No company could object, as according to ND rules, the prospective bidders must file a dispute BEFORE the bid, not after.
I do hope North Dakota realizes the mistake made and tries to rectify it. Without doing that, the citizens of ND were heavily shortchanged on this one.
Up Next – Wyoming’s Concerns About Their Monopolistic System
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