Workers Comp Looks To Change In A Static Industry
The Workers Comp industry always wonders what the landscape will look like in 10 years. Recruiters, Supervisors, and/or HR Departments will usually ask this question at some point in the job interview. “Where do you see yourself in 5, 7, or 10 years?” The standing answer usually is supervisor, Manager, and then VP.
Using that same tact, where will Workers Comp be in 10 years? One of the surest things is the way that banking, insurance, and finance have stayed the same at their core while there have been quite a few changes.
The easiest way to project the next 10 years is to look at the same time period in the past.
The major changes for Workers Compensation were:
- WCMSA Offsets
- Affordable Care Act
- Network additions such as PBMs, DMEs, and MPNs.
- Technology Advancement – even though WC severely lags in this area
- More attention to ALAE (Allocated Loss Adjustment Expenses)
- Recessionary Job Market’s effect on return to work
- Carrier/TPA’s flux of centralization and decentralization
- Vendor changes such as Intracorp
- Adjusters less dependent upon assistants for communications and form processing
- States becoming more homogenous such as adding fee schedules
- The exponential growth of WC info online
- Remote adjusting
The next 10 years for Workers Comp may have:
- Claims staff working from home more than in an office
- Video (Skype, etc.) contact with employers, doctors, and injured employees
- Remote video mediations
- Elimination of all paper forms and files – the truly paperless office
- Hacking of WC data – some insurance claims systems are very vulnerable
- 24-hour healthcare as a replacement for Workers Comp using Affordable Healthcare Act state and federal exchanges
- Workers Comp becoming very homogenous – possibly the same forms and rules with indexing for weekly TTD payments across all states
- Healthcare and Workers Comp insurance being provided by the same carriers more often
- Certain jobs were reduced sharply or eliminated – there were once exclusively WC field adjusters as I was one when I first started in the business.
There are many more changes that have occurred over the last 10 years and others that will occur in the next 10. If you think of any, please feel free to comment.
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