June 5, 2024 – Employers, insurers and claimants should start planning for changes to how Medicare’s liabilities are accounted for in workers compensation settlements, experts say.
The changes, which will remove the reporting threshold in settlements that include Medicare set-asides and define penalty amounts, could increase the likelihood of significant fines for noncompliance and prolong settlement negotiations, they say.
February 5, 2024 – The acquisition of physician practices by large hospital systems is having an adverse effect on states’ workers compensation systems, experts say.
While proponents of so-called “vertical integration” in health care say the practice benefits consumers by delivering care more efficiently, workers comp researchers say consolidation drives up pricing due to decreased competition and can have a negative effect on return-to-work outcomes. And the efficiency argument, they say, relates to administrative efficiency, not patient care efficiency.
November 7, 2023 – With 30 percent of claims payers achieving top performer status, what steps can the remaining 70 percent take to catch up? This is a pivotal question the Workers’ Compensation Benchmarking Study has continued to ask over its past decade of research.
November 1, 2023 – Implementing advanced technology and frontline patient advocacy are neck and neck among the fastest-growing trends in workers compensation claims management, but the best results for patients often come from balancing the two, experts say.
Improved access to data and more efficient communication should not be allowed to sterilize the claims management process, they say.
October 31, 2023 – Over the past decade, claims departments have faced enormous challenges and opportunities, including changing workplace dynamics stemming from the global pandemic, employee turnover and labor shortages, an accelerated focus on digital transformation, escalating claims severity, and greater social accountability for the treatment of injured workers. Yet, looking back, it may seem that “everything and nothing has changed.” Somewhere in between is reality.
October 26, 2023 – A lot has changed in the past 10 years. We survived a pandemic. More and more states have legalized marijuana for either medical or recreational consumption. Smartphones have gone from being a luxury to a commonplace technology.
With so much changing, it’s natural for workers’ compensation to take a step back and ask: How has our industry evolved over the last decade? The Rising Workers’ Compensation Benchmarking Study tries to answer that question.
October 12, 2023 – Business Insurance interviews Rising CEO Jason Beans about the Rising’s annual survey of claims professionals, including how it came about and key findings for the study’s 10th annual report.
