More WC Innovation from NWCDC – Thermazone

December 11, 2014 By JL Risk Management Consultants

WC Innovation from NWCDC From Medical Company

I had written earlier in the week on searching for WC innovation at the recent National Workers Compensation and Disability Conference last month in Las Vegas.

Picture of WC Innovation People with Various Occupations Putting Their Hands on Top of Each Other

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As most of the innovation was in the vendor booths, I visited everyone of them over two days time. It was great to see cutting edge products and services.

A simple but wonderful technique for pain control without drugs was one of the vendors. Thermazone– actually let me try out their product at the booth (great marketing) seemed to have an innovative product.

I am not an expert in mechanics, medicine, or bio-science. However, Thermazone was a great innovation. They have a Thermazone unit that heats or cools very quickly. It is very thin. The unit was small enough to carry in my hand.

Once the unit was turned on, once to heat and once to cool, the relief, if needed was instantaneous. The pad that was hooked up to the unit by hoses was very thin, pliable, and comfortable.

The temperature was controlled by water flowing through micro-welded channels. All the user had to do was add distilled water that you can buy at Walmart for 90 cents per gallon.

Instead of me droning on about their use, below is information from their website. WC adjusters, risk managers, rehab nurses, and industrial physicians should take notice of a great product. I did not evaluate the cost of the product.

Description

Finally, a device that offers easy, high-efficiency heating and cooling therapy without the use of ice!

Our compact design is packed full of features and provides consistent, therapeutic temperature levels for any part of the body. Our technology is designed to treat the total range of traumatology including:

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In-Hospital & Clinic Treatment
Post-Surgical Recovery
Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine
Professional Physiotherapy
Sports Medicine
Trauma Rehabilitation
Private and In-Home Care
Pain Management

This technology satisfies a clear unmet clinical need- safe, effective and targeted localized treatment with precise temperature management and registration. Traditional means of heating and cooling therapy (ice packs and gel packs, heating pads and circulating devices) are not efficient or fully effective including issues with:

Pain and temperature miss-use (freeze burns and hot spots)
Condensation (dripping)
Rapid loss of temperature
No temperature control
Toxic content, risk of wound poisoning
Environmental impact

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Workers Comp Conference Searching For Innovation In Las Vegas

November 18, 2014 By JL Risk Management Consultants

Las Vegas Workers Comp Conference – Innovation

The largest Workers Comp conference occurs this week in Las Vegas. The conference covers both national and regional issues. The proceedings start tomorrow with the keynote speaker tomorrow through November 21^st. I will try to blog live some of the conference live if possible.

Wikimedia Commons – Fuzheado

If any of the blog or newsletter readers would like to hear more about one of the sessions, let me know. I am quite flexible in my schedule other than meeting with a few attendees and vendors on November 20^th. I do not like to follow one track. The tracks can be seen on the NWCDC website and on one of Cutcompcosts.com’s earlier blogs.

The main area I am searching for is the existence of innovation in WC. What sessions or vendor booths contain innovation will likely be a topic for many years to come. Workers Comp severely lacks innovation when compared to other lines of insurance.

Comparatively, workers comp lags behind even health insurance in innovations. Some of the innovators at the NWCDC started with the health insurance markets. Workers Compensation would then become a sideline business for any of the vendors.

I am actually flying into San Diego, meeting with a client, and then driving from there to Las Vegas. The desert drive is not one to which I look forward except for the ghost towns along the way. Typing this info into a laptop at 35,000 feet is not that great.

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PMSI Progressive Medical Merger – Small WC Companies Fading?

September 10, 2013 By JL Risk Management Consultants

PMSI and Progressive Medical Merger Causes Workers Comp Buzz

PMSI and Progressive Medical Merger shows that small WC companies may not exist much longer in the insurance landscape. The buzz at the end of last week and over the weekend was the surprising merger of two Workers Comp service titans.

Picture Of Couple With Progressive Medical Merger Financial Advisor

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The merger actually made sense from a financial standpoint as these two companies’ lines of service will complement each other very well.

The WC ancillary service market has long been contracting to a few major players. The buyout and merger fever may just be a premonition of the future.

If one wanted to survey the “new” Workers Comp landscape, they had to look no further than the 2012 LRP Las Vegas conference. Many of the booth workers had commented they were being bought out or had just acquired some type of ancillary service company.

PMSI was one of the WC originals for prescriptions, TENS units (are they still in use?), durable medical equipment, and other related services. PMSI had and has always done a great job of face-to-face marketing.

Progressive Medical seemed to be one of the “late entrants” into the ancillary services market. However, their stellar PBM services were cutting edge at the time. The press release for Progressive Medical can be found here. For convenience the press release on Progressive’s website is presented below.

Progressive Medical and PMSI announced today that the two companies have entered into a definitive agreement to merge. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter subject to receipt of regulatory clearance. The combined company, which will be led by Executive Chairman Eileen Auen from PMSI and Co-CEOs Emry Sisson and Tommy Young from Progressive Medical, will deliver comprehensive workers’ compensation pharmacy benefit management services including end-to-end pharmacy, ancillary and settlement solutions.

Picture Of Two Businessman Shake Hands Progressive Medical Merger Agreement

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“Bringing together the resources and deep industry expertise of these two companies will enable the combined organization to continue to drive product innovation in the workers’ compensation marketplace while delivering operational and service excellence and ever improving clinical and cost containment services to our clients,” said Tommy Young, Co-CEO of Progressive Medical.
Eileen Auen, Chairman and CEO of PMSI, stated “The PMSI leadership team is delighted to partner with Progressive Medical. We will continue to deliver customized solutions to our clients, and I am personally excited about working closely with the combined team to bring unique solutions to our customers.”

“This merger will drive increased efficiency in the workers’ compensation business,” according to Emry Sisson, Co-CEO of Progressive Medical. “We will strategically leverage the capabilities of the combined organization to bring even greater value to our customers.”

Funds managed by Kelso & Company have agreed to acquire a significant ownership stake in
the combined company. StoneRiver Group, the controlling shareholder of Progressive Medical,
will continue to be a significant shareholder in the combined business.

Workers Comp Systems Are Antiquated At Best

November 26, 2012 By JL Risk Management Consultants

Workers Comp Systems

One of my main concerns in working with clients is the basically outdated Workers Comp systems that have to be trudged through to even perform basic operations. This article on outdated Workers Comp systems analyzed what Workers Comp claims workers already knew – most systems are severely outdated.

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When we advise investment groups or are analyzing a claims system, I am sometimes shocked at the system in place. Workers Comp systems are actually even worse. When I attended the recent LRP National Workers Compensation Conference in Las Vegas this year and last, I was searching for something new in the claim processing arena. While there are great system providers, I still did not see one that I would call cutting-edge.

The aforementioned article centered on a study of claims executives. Some of these are not necessarily directly related to Workers Comp. However, there are some that are “spot on. ” Some of the almost shocking results were:

83% of claims executives thought their systems were outdated and they needed the IT departments help to make any changes
Half (54 percent) of those surveyed say their core claims systems are more than five years old and almost one-third (32 percent) of respondents say they rely on more than five different applications to process claims. How can someone be productive if they have to run five different systems? I know of one carrier that presently uses eight.
Wikimedia Commons – Dreamsoffuture
More than three-quarters (78 percent) of respondents say they are on a path to upgrade their claims systems; among these respondents, almost one-third (31 percent) say the last major upgrade was made more than three years ago.
Two-thirds (66 percent) of claims executives surveyed think their claims systems are not optimized to collect and analyze the growing volume of data available – such as insights about consumers from social media and usage data collected by means of telemetry and Global Positioning System – which would enable them to refine and improve claims management.
More than three-quarters (78 percent) of respondents say their claims organization is not equipped to manage new forms and level of risks such as cyber-crime, terrorism, increased frequency of severity of natural catastrophes.

I will cover one statistic in my next post that will have employers and some claim adjusters shouting at their screens. It is a shocker.