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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

ADA: The Fix is Fixed

Posted on July 01, 2008
Back in February we blogged a rather drastic proposal to "restore" the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by expanding eligibility to just about anyone. We feared that blurring the lines between transient conditions and impairments that "substantially limit" major life activities would paralyze American business, clog the courts with trivial cases and divert attention away from the truly disabled, who...

Teddy Awards: A Pat on the Back for Comp Management

Posted on June 30, 2008
Risk & Insurance Magazine has announced the 2008 competition for the Teddy Awards, given to organizations demonstrating a long-term commitment to improving workers compensation performance. Creativity and teamwork are major considerations. Four awards will be given: one for a company; one for a nonprofit or government entity; a third award will honor a federal government entity (that will be interesting!)...

Health Wonk Review and news roundup

Posted on June 26, 2008
Health Wonk Review - Jaan Sidorov has posted a well-written and very interesting issue of Health Wonk Review at Disease Management Care Blog. Jaan has been a frequent contributor to HWR of late but this is his first time hosting - so when you stop by, be sure to check out his blog, which is billed as "An ongoing forum...

9/11 Rescuers: Fools Rush In...?

Posted on June 25, 2008
Anthony DePalma has an interesting analysis of the 10,000 claims against New York City in the aftermath of 9/11. The city has reviewed the claims submitted by people involved in the immediate aftermath and clean up. As many as 30 percent of the claimants are suffering from nothing more than a runny nose or cough...

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Injured and Illegal...in South Korea

Posted on June 24, 2008
We sometimes forget that the USA is not the only country with an undocumented worker problem. Anywhere you find developed countries with lots of (relatively high paying) jobs, you will find people willing to do anything to get them. Which leads us to an article in Korea Times by Park Si-soo...

Google throws its hat into the electronic medical records arena

Posted on June 23, 2008
Search behemoth Google is making its initial foray into the electronic medical records (EMR) business with the recent launch of Google Health. (Also see the FAQs). This service goes toe-to-toe with Microsoft's Health Vault in the race to become the web's dominant player...

Brendan Doyle: Return-to-Work Person of the Year

Posted on June 20, 2008
You probably have never heard of Brendan Doyle, a Rhode Island state trooper, but his story, as told by Amanda Milkovits in the Providence Journal, belongs in the hearts and minds of anyone involved in disability management. He exemplifies what great medicine, combined with ferocious determination and discipline, can accomplish...

Looking for Fraud...In the Mirror

Posted on June 19, 2008
Imagine you are an attorney in Massachusetts looking for a little work. The Office of Labor and Workforce Development (OLWD), a state agency, hires you and 10 other attorneys to examine applications for unemployment insurance. Normally, this work would be performed by state employees, but the combination of cost-efficiency lay offs and a bad economy has caused a surge in...

Cavalcade of Risk and news roundup: NH, WV, residual market, WC cost drivers & more

Posted on June 18, 2008
Weekly carnival - A lively edition of Cavalcade of Risk has been posted by Jim at Bargaineering. NH targeting misclassified employees - New Hampshire employers take note: The departments of labor, employment security, insurance and revenue are teaming up to ferret out employers who misclassify workers as independent contractors to avoid paying workers compensation and unemployment insurance...

New York Trusts, Revisited: Comp Board Channels Willie Sutton

Posted on June 17, 2008
Yesterday we blogged the New York Workers Comp Board's unusual solution to a cash flow problem: when a dozen trust funds collapsed, the Board decided to hit up the remaining, solvent funds with an assessment: they raised assessments from the routine total of $500,000 to a staggering $12 million...

Risky Risk Management in New York

Posted on June 16, 2008
Compensation Risk Management (CRM) is a third party administrator for eight workers comp trusts in New York. These trusts offer comp coverage to affinity groups in the areas of health care, wholesale/retail and transportation. As we read in the New York Times in an article by Steven Greenhouse, there is good news and bad news about CRM: the good news...

Health Wonk Review, scaffold survivor update, hand protection, and potential cancer cluster

Posted on June 13, 2008
Jane Hiebert White has posted a great edition of Health Wonk Review: Washington Week at Health Affairs - and she notes that this issue coincides with Academy Health's Annual Research Meeting held in DC this past week, a gathering based on the concept that health policy should be informed by research...

Footnote on a Fatality

Posted on June 12, 2008
Yesterday we blogged the death of Lauro Ortega, who was crushed while excavating a building site in New York. We assumed that he was protected by workers comp, even as his lawyer pursued more lucrative remedies from the (recently indicted) employer, William Lattarulo...

Employers as Criminals

Posted on June 11, 2008
William Lattarulo owns several buildings and vacant lots in Brooklyn NY. Back in March, his workers were digging a foundation for a commercial laundry at 791 Glenmore Ave, when a more experienced contractor warned Lattarulo of an immediate hazard: the excavation had reached a level below the foundation of the adjacent building...

Driving and flash floods

Posted on June 10, 2008
Flash flooding (video) in the central states over the last few days has resulted in numerous deaths. With "ordinary" flooding, there is a build up over time from rain or melting snow as rivers and bodies of water overflow their banks. Weather authorities and media have time to issue public alerts...

There Goes the Judge

Posted on June 09, 2008
Back in November we blogged the saga of Judge Robert Restaino, a City Court judge in Niagra Falls NY. He apparently was having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day on March 11, 2005, when a cell phone went off in his courtroom, in violation of his judicial protocols...

A Tree Falls in Rhode Island

Posted on June 06, 2008
We have been following the case of Edgar Valasquez, the undocumented worker who was seriously injured by a chain saw in 2006. (Our two prior blogs are here and here.) His employer, Billy G's Tree Service, failed to carry workers comp insurance. When Edgar showed up at the courthouse for his comp hearing, federal agents (apparently tipped off by Billy...

News roundup: Cavalcade of Risk, disease mongering, claims adjusting, crane safety, and more

Posted on June 05, 2008
Congratulations to Hank Stern of InsureBlog on the the second anniversary of Cavalcade of Risk - check out some of the best of the web's risk management posts from the last few weeks. Kudos to Hank for keeping this biweekly "best of" carnival going - it's a great way to be introduced to new blogs...

Setting Limits in California

Posted on June 04, 2008
California had a long-standing reputation as a workers compensation nightmare: not because injured employees received generous benefits - they did not - but because doctors and lawyers exploited the system to generate enormous fees. Governor Schwarzenegger, AKA the Terminator, put an end to that with his extensive 2003-04 reforms...

Firefighters revisited: Presumption's Slippery Slope

Posted on June 03, 2008
In yesterday's blog, my colleague Julie Ferguson discussed the issue of compensible illness for firefighters. Forty states already have statutes giving the benefit of the doubt to firefighters: if they become ill from many forms of cancer or heart disease, the illness is presumed to be work related...

Firefighters and presumptive disability statutes

Posted on June 02, 2008
Sally Roberts has written a good article on firefighters and state workers comp laws in the recent edition of Business Insurance. Regardless of profession, illnesses have traditionally posed more of a compensability challenge than an out-and-out injury...

Health Wonk Review is Up

Posted on May 29, 2008
Hank Stern has posted the latest edition of Health Wonk Review. Essential for wonks, a nice option for the rest of us. Check it out here....

Docs Give Grading System a Failing Grade

Posted on May 28, 2008
The Group Insurance Commission (GIC) in Massachusetts came up with a nifty idea: let's grade physicians based upon efficiency and competence; we'll reward those with high marks and penalize those who are (relative) failures. (The GIC administers health plans for public sector employees...

Lost Youth: the stories of four teens injured at work

Posted on May 27, 2008
In a few weeks, millions of teens will be joining the work force, many for the first time. For most, nothing out of the ordinary will occur, but for about 70, their jobs will be lethal. About every three minutes, a teen is injured on the job. Worksafe BC has compiled the true stories of four ordinary kids whose first...

DWT = DOA

Posted on May 23, 2008
vlingo is a Cambridge MA firm specializing in voice recognition software. They have completed a study of driving habits, specifically, the prevalence of driving while texting (DWT) across the US. The results, in the context of the upcoming Memorial Day weekend, are nothing less than terrifying...

Cavalcade of Risk is Up

Posted on May 22, 2008
What do Bank of America, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley have in common? If you said they all have lost billions in absurdly risky loans, you would be right, but that's not the answer we are looking for. We learn in the latest edition of Cavalcade of Risk, ably hosted by Jason Shafrin of Healthcare Economist,...

The Rhode Island Solution

Posted on May 21, 2008
Rhode Island may be small, but when it comes to tackling the problem of undocumented workers, they think big. Last month, Governor Donald Carcieri issued an executive order encouraging law enforcement officials - from state police to local cops - to determine the immigration status of anyone taken into custody and take immediate steps to deport those who are here...

Noteworthy blogs and tools

Posted on May 20, 2008
Time for a blogroll and sidebar update! We're always looking for new resources to keep things fresh - we've been told we have the best compilation of workers' comp link resources on the web - we hope it's useful to you. Noteworthy blogs The Safety Blog - this blog is sponsored by Safety Services Company...

Meatpacking in Iowa: Not Exactly Kosher?

Posted on May 19, 2008
Postville Iowa is a one traffic light town with a population of 2,300 people. Last Monday, as we read in the Washington Post, 17 percent of the town's residents were arrested in a raid coordinated by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). All were employees of AgriProcessors, the nation's largest producer of kosher meats...

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: Not in This Army!

Posted on May 16, 2008
Norma Perez is a psychologist who leads the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) program at a medical facility for veterans in Temple, Texas. As we read in the Washington Post, she is pretty busy with claims. Given that veterans with a PTSD diagnosis are eligible for up to $2,527 a month in disability benefits, she came up with a great way...

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