Workers Comp Content – Avoiding the Recycle Button

February 20, 2020 By JL Risk Management Consultants

Workers Comp Content – Are We Just Recycling The Same Subjects?

Creating new and interesting Workers Comp content becomes more of a challenge with every article. Google dislikes repetitive content. I think it has a point. No one wants to read the same thing over and over again.

Wikimedia Public Use License – EpSos de Flickr

Take the coronavirus, for instance, one news story was slightly altered and repeated again and again at almost all news outlets. An article from 2018 shows my concern for the same-old-same-old recycled crises in Workers Comp content.

For instance, the opioid crises occurred in the 1980s and again in the 1990s. Workers Comp gave it due attention in 2009 and forward.

The Workers Comp Medicare Set-Asides were the big news for quite some time. That subject faded away. Do not worry. The WCMSAs will be the buzzword again soon. Trust me.

Fresh Workers Comp Content Frustrating At Times

Man working workers comp content at his desk

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I, as have other Workers Comp blog authors, sit for many hours racking my brain to provide good content that is not a rehash of older articles that I have written in the last 10 years.

Writing on conferences seemed to create a large amount of fresh Workers Comp content. Then, the conferences became repetitive, so my resulting articles followed suit and also became repetitive.

I do not write every article to satisfy Google’s SEO rules. Most of them are written to follow those guidelines. Many search terms where I have broken every rule ranked higher than when I stayed in the boundaries of proper SEO. The J&L Cutcompcosts.com website does not sell any materials online. I am told that I need to convert to https for reader privacy and safety. What info would a user put on this website as no information is required?

One of the more irritating rules suggests that the longer the article, the better the article will rank. If you notice now on a Google search, you end up with massive articles that contain the answer to your one quick question – but you have to scroll through countless paragraphs to find your answer.

California AB 5 Example

California Assembly Bill 5 ( AB 5) seemed to cover new ground in Workers’ Comp content. (Not so.) The battle between Federal and State taxing agencies and employers that use independent contractors has been waged since the 1940s.

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Workers Comp carriers and employers debating on who is a covered contractor and who is not has been in existence as long as Workers’ Comp carriers have been in existence.

California AB 5 looked to be a new idea on how to handle independent contractors. Then again, that new CA law still remains in flux and will not be settled for a few years, if ever.

Top Ten Recycled Terms Over The Last 30 Years

You can fill in this list below as it applies to your situation. These 10 comes from my experience and background.

Employee or Employer Fraud
Opiates
Major court decisions
Independent Contractors
Soft Market vs. Hard Market
Carriers and PEO’s closing shop
Analytics becoming the main statistical drivers – still waiting on this one
Non-opioid treatment regimens
Classification Code changes – happens every year
New forms of Workers Comp insurance that turn out to be the old forms – just repackaged

The list could easily reach 100 if one takes enough time to think through the recycled Workers’ Comp content.

©J&L Risk Management Inc Copyright Notice

Workers Comp Hot Buttons Top 10 Recycled Again

February 9, 2017 By JL Risk Management Consultants

Workers Comp Hot Buttons Recycled Every Few Years – Yawn!

The Top 10 Workers Comp hot buttons never seem to be new. The topics are recycled again and again as newfound topics of the press and in most WC conversations.

If one thinks about it for a few minutes, has there really been a new topic of discussion on Work Comp in the last 20 years? Let us look at the recycled topics aka workers comp hot buttons:

Opioids – this was a major concern now and 15 years ago. The title for it then was Pharmaceutical Management. It is the same topic with a new moniker. People overdoing medications in Workers Comp has been a hot button item for decades.
Fraud – this one is recycled like beverage cans. Employer fraud, employee fraud, provider fraud – the list goes on and on. This topic recycles every few years. News articles are still published as filler on an employee that ran a business while receiving workers comp checks.
Alternative insurance coverages – Captives, PEO’s, Large deductible, small deductible – these will be back in the news as newfound topics within five years – trust me on this one. There are a few viable ways to cut your workers comp costs using the alternative markets.
Senate or House Bill <fill in the blank> – this one seems to be concentrated more in California. A new bill becomes the topic of conversation and is the buzz in the press for weeks to months. Then along comes another one and the last one fades in the rearview mirror.
Wikimedia – włodi
An unfair Workers Comp System – a reporter or news organization pulls together a few injured workers that were shorted by the system and tried to make it the slippery slope method – one therefore all are mistreated – even though Workers Comp is still the best delivery method for healing and benefits available.
Workers Comp is Dead – I have forecasted this one myself – however I was talking about more of a warning for the WC community to be flexible as sitting behind your desk and waiting for the other shoe to drop will not cut it nowadays. After the current Presidential election, many so-called pundits said that WC is doomed – not so fast. Flexibility is the key.
Decentralization/Centralization – also known as expansion/retraction. This area is two-fold; one from the carriers/TPA’s and one from vendors. We are in a centralization phase as carriers/TPA’s are buying each other up at an accelerated pace as are the vendors who are absorbing competitors. This phase has happened at least 4 -5 times in my WC career. Tech may sustain a decentralization to a point.
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The Big Safety Push vs. Eliminating Safety/Risk Management – this is the area where companies hemorrhage funds. Employers will all of a sudden push safety very heavily – usually right after a spate of accidents or a visit from OSHA. The other side of the coin is the companies that have eliminated all of their safety or risk management efforts as a way to save short term cash. The bottom line here is eliminating safety and risk management in any organization will always cost more in the long term. I have seen the financials of many companies that back up having a safety department even if it is an outside safety consultant.
The Big Work Comp Tech Push – WC is 10 – 15 years behind even health in most areas of tech. I have jumped down into the proverbial rabbit hole many times to look at tech. I have a very heavy tech background. Tech improvements seem normal to me. However, I am still on the lookout for a decent WC app or any tech outside of medical devices.
Work Comp Gurus – Workers compensation soothsayers come and go once or twice a decade. The blogosphere has many including myself. Look at their backgrounds heavily before you make a decision as to whether they know their subject. This part of the insurance world is too complicated for one person to say they know “the industry.” My twitter handle is @workcompguru. I actually started the name as a happy hour joke, no really as one of my long-time friends would always call me Mister Guru when we discussed WC. The old saying “If I claim to be a wise man, it surely means that I do not know” fits well.

Next week I will cover how to combat these recycled changes in the Workers Comp markets from the workers comp hot buttons.

©J&L Risk Management Inc Copyright Notice

What Will Workers Comp Industry Look Like In 10 Years?

May 30, 2013 By JL Risk Management Consultants

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.

Badge of 10 Years Workers Comp Look Like

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Using that same tact, where will Workers Comp be in 10 years? One of the most sure things is the way that banking, insurance, and finance has stayed the same at its 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 into the past. The major changes for Workers Compensation were:

WCMSA Offsets
Affordable Care Act
Network additions such as PBM’s, DME’s, MPN’s.
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
Exponential growth of WC info online
Remote adjusting

Family Running Workers Comp Through Sea At sunset

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The next 10 years for Workers Comp may have:

Claims staffs 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 true 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 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.

Workers Comp Major Changes – Six Signals Show Upcoming Changes

March 25, 2010 By JL Risk Management Consultants

Workers Comp Major Changes

We now have six signals for Workers Comp major changes. The Death of Workers Comp was our most popular blog post since I started it. I have heard from many readers that say “no way.”

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Below is a list of things to make one think further about the changing WC landscape.

1. The Feds will have all Workers Comp data from the CMS database soon. They can analyze it to their advantage.

2. Senator Byrd from WV – very powerful – has twice tried to add 24 hour coverage amendments to different bills.

3. The Federal Insurance Office (FIO) was quietly created in a finance package.

4. At a major rating bureau conference, the main presenter said “They may not get all they want now, but the Feds will keep expanding their powers into WC every year.”

5. Twenty years ago, no one would have thought that we would have a nationalized health care system – but we do now.

6. It was a river to cross to have 24 hour healthcare coverage in the past, now it is a small stream to step over. The AFLAC model is the best example.

Workers Comp is not soon going away. If anyone believes it will not change quickly – six letters – CMS MSA. The way that claims departments settle files changed greatly since having to have CMS approval to mood forward. The CMS WCMSA represents just one workers comp major change in the last few years. More are coming.