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Disability Law

Workers Comp Insider

About workers compensation insurance, risk management, workplace health and safety, occupational medicine, and related topics.
By Lynch Ryan

Post Frequency: 5.3/day

Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 15:16:48

Injuries at the gym: compensability, incentives, and wellness

Posted on July 16, 2009
Roberto Ceniceros blogs about the New York appeals court ruling in Frank P. Torre v. Logic Technology, which awarded workers comp benefits to an employee for an injury sustained in the gym. Usually, injuries sustained in extracurricular activities aren't covered by workers comp, but there are exceptions, such as when injuries occur during "mandatory attendance" events or while an employee...

82nd Cavalcade of Risk

Posted on July 15, 2009
Our friends Jay and Louise Norris have posted The 82nd Cavalcade of Risk at Colorado Health Insurance Insider. Louise opens with our recent post on Atul Gawande's health care article and she notes that if her own observations are to be believed, she's seen signs of over-utilization in workers comp medical care, too...

A survivor's story: Iowa teen advocates for farm safety after her near-fatal encounter with a power take-off shaft

Posted on July 14, 2009
Earlier this year, legendary baseball great Mark Fidrych died while working on his farm in Northboro, Massachusetts. He was working underneath his truck when his clothing became entangled in a power takeoff (PTO) shaft. PTOs are used to transfer power from tractors or trucks to other machinery...

New Health Wonk Review; other news notes

Posted on July 09, 2009
If you find the task of following breaking news developments on the health care reform front a trifle daunting, we have a solution: let the health policy blogosphere's best braniacs dish up and dissect the news for you in bite size portions in the bi-weekly compendium of the best of heath care policy posts...

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Spouse as Caregiver: To Pay or Not to Pay

Posted on July 08, 2009
Serious workplace injuries often turn spouses into caregivers. So the question becomes, are their services compensable under workers comp? As is so often the case, it depends upon where you live. The Supreme Court of Arizona recently decided a case in the spouse's favor (Sabino Carbajal v...

Atul Gawande's The Cost Conundrum - Why haven't you read it yet?

Posted on July 06, 2009
Over the last twenty years, medical costs have gradually, but steadily, replaced indemnity wage replacement as the engine driving the workers' compensation train. This is the same period during which our nation's health care costs have grown from average among OECD countries (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Economic Development) to double the average (PDF)...

Putrescible Waste

Posted on July 02, 2009
There are certain aspects of civilized life that few of us want to experience directly. Once our garbage has disappeared from the curbside, we are unlikely to give it any further thought. We have little curiousity about the desolate environments where this garbage is taken...

Cavalcade of Risk and other news notes

Posted on July 01, 2009
Cavalcade of Risk #81 is posted at Jaan Sidorov's Disease Management Care blog. Check it out, covered topics include health care, information technology, personal risk, market risk and more. Confined space - three sanitation workers died when they were overcome by hydrogen sulfide gas in an 18 foot hole at Regal Recycling Company in Queens...

Coordinated Health Care: Now There's An Idea!

Posted on June 29, 2009
For the last 3 or 4 years, I've been privileged to be a Trustee at Commonwealth Care Alliance, a Massachusetts non-profit HMO serving dual eligible elderly poor. In this case, "dual eligible" means people who qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid. CCA does great work, but it's always swimming upstream...

Health Wonk Review's Confederations Cup Edition

Posted on June 25, 2009
The most recent edition of Health Wonk Review - the Confederations Cup Edition is freshly posted at Jason Shafrin's Healthcare Economist. Where else can you get the week's highlights of soccer and health care policy all in one place? Quite appropriate because as the health care issue heats up, the debate is getting to be more and more like a...

More on the UCLA lab death of Sheri Sangji

Posted on June 24, 2009
Chemical & Engineering News has a followup story on the UCLA lab fire which killed Sheri Sangji in December 2008. The University of California, Los Angeles has paid the OSHA fine but is appealing the state's findings of workplace safety violations. According to the article, UCLA's vice chancellor for legal affairs, said the university's appeal was necessary to ensure "that...

Fail-Safe Failure

Posted on June 23, 2009
At least nine people were killed yesterday when a Red Line Metro Rail train crashed into an unmoving train. Washington D.C. trains are equipt with the latest fail-safe technology. Accidents are not supposed to happen: trains are controlled by computers, which theoretically prevent any two trains from occupying the same space at the same time (the textbook definition of an...

Risk Transfer without Risk

Posted on June 22, 2009
The Defense Base Act (DBA) was enacted in 1941, to cover the injuries to civilian employees - primarily a few hundred engineers - during the second world war. The act might have worked then, but it certainly is not working now, nearly 70 years later. As we have blogged in the past, the DBA is a boondoggle, generating huge profits...

Vintage safety clips - women in the workplace

Posted on June 18, 2009
In searching for some safety videos, we chanced upon these vintage clips about workplace safety for women and supervising women, which we pass along for your amusement and elucidation. We're happy to note that in the ensuing years, there have been significant advances for both women and for safety! The Trouble With Women (1959)...

Cavalcade of Risk #80 is posted; other news notes

Posted on June 17, 2009
Get your biweekly fill of risk-related blog posts - Rita Schwab does a great job in hosting Cavalcade of Risk #80 at her blog Supporting Safer Healthcare. And in other news ... Construction - According to the release of a report from the Workers Defense Project, Texas is the most dangerous state in the union for construction workers...

White Man Quits Lousy Job

Posted on June 15, 2009
Back in April we blogged some of the formidable problems facing the obsolete, friction-ridden comp system in New York. Two years ago, Elliot Spitzer appointed Zach Weiss to clean up the mess, just as voters had chosen Spitzer to clean up the mess in Albany...

Health Wonk Review - special health care reform issue

Posted on June 11, 2009
Joe Paduda has posted this week's Health Wonk Review: Health Reform - what's happening and why. It includes analysis and commentary from our usual participating policy experts - as well as guest commentary from Senator Byron Dorgan (D ND), chair of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, who gives us his thoughts on the importance of reform and a window into...

Will Health Care Reform Crush Workers Comp?

Posted on June 09, 2009
If health care reform is the proverbial 800 pound gorilla, then the medical portion of workers comp is a 15 pound Maine Coon cat: it might big for a cat, but compared to a giant gorilla, it is barely noticeable. Nonetheless, this cat is blessed with a very strong notion of what it needs...

Suffering for Art

Posted on June 08, 2009
Alan Rosenbaum is a revered professor of art at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). He shows students how to work with clay - at least, he used to, until he was disabled by silicosis. Rosenbaum was exposed to silica dust in the clay mixing room and ceramic studios of the university...

Death in the lab: why aren't university labs safer?

Posted on June 04, 2009
Earlier this year, 23 year-old research assistant Sheri Sangji suffered an excruciating death after having been engulfed in flames in a UCLA science laboratory. A drop of t-butyl lithium, a substance that ignites on contact with air, spilled on her clothing causing an instant conflagration...

Cavalcade of Risk: 3rd Anniversary Edition, and other news briefs

Posted on June 03, 2009
Hank Stern is hosting Third Anniversary Edition of Cavalcade of Risk over at InsureBlog. Hank deserves a pat on the back and many plaudits for all the work he has done in founding and maintaining this carnival. While many contribute and host, he's the real heart and soul behind this operation - so many thanks! New in the blogosphere...

Can You Terminate an Employee on Workers Comp?

Posted on June 02, 2009
Here's a question that comes up frequently in our employer seminars: can you terminate an employee who is on workers comp? In general, it's not a good idea. In many states there is a presumption that the termination is in retaliation for filing the comp claim...

Cell Phones: Unsafe at Any Speed?

Posted on June 01, 2009
We've been following the tentative steps taken by management to confront a relatively new and ubiquitous risk: the use of cell phones while driving. Most people seem to realize that cell phone use is a dangerous distraction, whether involving talking or, lord help us, texting...

Annals of Fraud: Trifecta for Bay Area GC

Posted on May 29, 2009
In the world of workers comp, there is no lack of opportunity for fraud. We've seen doctors rip off the system by billing for services that were either never provided or not needed. We've seen employees fake injuries (relatively rare) or malinger on comp long after injuries have healed...

Bosstown's Health Wonk Review, and assorted other news briefs

Posted on May 28, 2009
Check out Health Wonk Review: Bosstown edition. Tinker Ready at Boston Health News makes her debut as host with an informative and entertaining edition of the biweekly roundup of the best of he health policy blogs. News briefs Michael Fox of Jottings By an Employer's Lawyer offers a great rundown of Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor's opinions on labor and...

Aging America: A Looming Catastrophe?

Posted on May 27, 2009
Take 78 million Baby Boomers and their retirement plans, mix with a woebegone social security system and the global economic meltdown of 2008/2009. Add in rising health care costs and the insurance industry?s natural propensity to avoid troubling issues, and you have a recipe for a looming catastrophe of the first order...

Compensable Sunshine, Revisted

Posted on May 26, 2009
Our blog last week linking skin cancer to workers comp has already generated a few comments. "Workers comp attorney" raises some interesting questions: (1) How much weight do you give to the person's leisure activities and/or length of employment? It seems these would certainly be factors in assessing whether the employment is the predominate cause...

Working Outdoors: Skin Cancer and Workers Comp

Posted on May 21, 2009
With the full heat of summer bearing down on us, the Insider has deputized its readership to become informal safety inspectors: the next time you leave the office, observe any people who are working outdoors. Your checklist should include the fundamental safety drill: fall protection for height exposures; personal protective equipment such as hard hats, work boots and goggles; secure...

Cavalcade of Risk; our Twitter debut; a few good blogs

Posted on May 20, 2009
Hot off the presses - Richard Eskow has posted the most recent edition of Cavalcade of Risk. He's got a good round-up of risk-related posts, but he had hazardous duty posting it due to a huge number of spam submissions. Spammy, fly-by-night blogs seem to be proliferating, grrr...

Collision course: the potential impact of Chrysler's bankruptcy & sale on state workers' comp systems

Posted on May 19, 2009
Roberto Ceniceros of Business Insurance has been tracking the potential impact that a Chrysler bankruptcy and sale could have on state workers comp systems. In a story last week, he reports that Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox has taken legal action to protect the state...

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