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Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

The Word Didn't Get There

Problems with the national workers' compensation system are addressed in today guest post authored by David DePaola and shared from http://daviddepaolo.blogspot.com/
Then I get an email from a former claims professional turned auditor that completely deflates my enthusiasm and makes me angry.
The emailer has been in the process of auditing some cases on behalf of an insurance carrier whose cases are administered by a Third Party Administrator.
This is a pretty typical arrangement. Carriers are very good at "writing the paper" and all the processes involved from brokerage administration to determining the risk (underwriting) and marketing. Then the job of actually handling the claims gets outsourced to specialized companies: TPAs.
The auditor writes she's appalled; outraged at the lack of any sense of urgency, the lack of responsiveness to defense attorneys, not to mention applicant's attorneys.
She's astounded at the failure to pay temporary total disability, the failure to advance permanent disability a year after the Agreed Medical Examiner's findings are undisputed to a person who's getting $500.00 a month from Social Security.
She's offended that the TPA lets the defense attorneys handle the files, lets cases linger until a pinky finger from 2008 ends up turning into hand, arm, neck, back, internal, sleep, psyche, etc., etc. - on a case that was really ready to settle no less than 4 years ago.
She asks, "Why would these cases still be open (excluding those with obvious complex if not catastrophic issues) when the file reflects many opportunities for settlement that slipped away?"
Of...
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Thursday, August 7, 2014

ROTTEN IN DENMARK

Today's post was shared by Julius Young and comes from www.workerscompzone.com

July 29 2014
You might have thought that news of bad behavior in California’s workers’ comp system was hitting bottom.
After all, could it get worse? Allegations of legislators taking money to help charlatans who profited off of the backs of injured workers (literally). Scads of doctors alleged to have taken kickbacks for prescribing questionable compound medicines one of which allegedly killed a baby.
It appears that law enforcement authorities are now focusing on relationships between some applicant attorney firms and medical groups.
In Southern California the Riverside County DA has executed a search warrant against a workers’ comp firm, California Injury Lawyers (CIL). Apparently this is a result of a long investigation into suspected workers’ comp fraud,  targeting operations allegedly connected to an individual named Peyman Heidary who is said to have a financial interest in as many as nine medical clinics in the Los Angeles area.
The details of the alleged bad behavior or fraud is unclear, and it must be noted that any allegations are currently just that, allegations.
But this case has the potential to involve a number of  Southern California health care providers as well as some lawyers.
Meanwhile, last year’s workers’ comp bill AB 1309 seems to be the focus of new allegations in the federal case against State Senator Leland Yee. A grand jury indictment contains allegations that Yee suggested that in...
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Thursday, January 16, 2014

How the West Virginia Spill Exposes Our Lax Chemical Laws

Today's post was shared by Mother Jones and comes from www.motherjones.com

Site of the spill on the Elk River in West VirginiaFoo Connor/Flickr
The West Virginia chemical spill that left some 300,000 people without access to water has exposed a gaping hole in the country's chemical regulatory system, according to environmental experts.
Much the state remains under a drinking-water advisory after the spill last week into the Elk River near a water treatment facility. As much as 7,500 gallons of the chemical 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, which is used in the washing of coal, leaked from a tank owned by a company called Freedom Industries.
A rush on bottled water ensued, leading to empty store shelves and emergency water delivery operations. According to news reports, 10 people were hospitalized following the leak, but none in serious condition.
The spill and ensuing drinking water shortage have drawn attention to a very lax system governing the use of chemicals, according to Richard Denison, a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund who specializes in chemical regulation. "Here we have a situation where we suddenly have a spill of a chemical, and little or no information is available on that chemical," says Denison.

West Virginia store shelf.
The problem is not necessarily that 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, or MCHM, is highly toxic. Rather, Denison says, the problem is that not a great deal about its toxicity is known. Denison has managed to track down a description of one 1990 study, conducted by manufacturer Eastman Chemical,...
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Monday, January 13, 2014

British Revised guidance on managing and controlling asbestos

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has revised guidance to help businesses understand how to work safely with asbestos.
The Approved Codes of Practice (ACOPs) L127 (The management of asbestos in non-domestic premises) and L143 (Work with materials containing asbestos) have been consolidated into one single revised ACOP – L143 Managing and working with asbestos.
L143 has been revised to make it easier for businesses and employers to understand and meet their legal obligations. It also reflects the changes introduced in The Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 (CAR 2012) on the notification of non-licensed work with asbestos, and consequent arrangements for employee medical examinations and record keeping.
Highlighting the benefits of the change, Kären Clayton, Director of HSE’s Long Latency Health Risks Division, said: “The two ACOPs have been updated and brought together to help employers find the information they need quickly and easily and understand how to protect their workers from dangers of working with asbestos. The revised ACOP also provides better clarity on identifying  dutyholders for non-domestic premises and the things they must do to comply with the ‘duty to manage’ asbestos.
ACOPs L127 and L143 were among several identified for: review and revision; consolidation; or withdrawal, following a recommendation made by Professor Ragnar Löfstedt in his report ‘Reclaiming Health and Safety for All’.
...
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Sunday, January 5, 2014

In the search for savings, the workplace gets an overhaul

The mobile workforce necessitates new office designs for on premises space. Today's post was shared by The Green Workplace and comes from www.theglobeandmail.com


The fifth floor of Manulife Financial Corp.’s stately headquarters on Toronto’s Bloor Street East sat empty during a recent tour, the workers having vacated about a week earlier.
The traditional offices on the periphery of the floor, in many different sizes and configurations, are destined to become a relic of the past.
Vancouver's real estate scene; Fairview slopes townhouses under construction (foreground) and high rise condo towers in the city's Yaletown district, May 3, 2013.
Vancouver's real estate scene; Fairview slopes townhouses under construction (foreground) and high rise condo towers in the city's Yaletown district, May 3, 2013.


The Canadian Press

MARKET VIEW

Video: Market View: Canada's housing market poised for stable 2014
A for sale sign outside townhouses in the Fairview neighbourhood of Vancouver on Monday, March 4, 2013.
A for sale sign outside townhouses in the Fairview neighbourhood of Vancouver on Monday, March 4, 2013.
That space will soon be open, well-lit and dotted with smaller workstations like the ones two floors below, where there is also a lounge area reminiscent of a modern coffee shop.
Manulife, one of the country’s largest life insurers, is embarking on a massive overhaul of its offices, one that will make more efficient use of its real estate by changing the way its employees work.
The company plans to increase the proportion of its work force that is mobile – that is, working remotely or dividing time between multiple locations – to 30 per cent.
Currently, that number stands at less than 5 per cent. It also intends to...
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Friday, January 3, 2014

North Dakota blast prompts review of oil train safety

A federal safety alert Thursday warned that crude oil flowing out of new fields in North Dakota may be more flammable than expected, a caution that comes several days after a train carrying about 3.5 million gallons of the same oil crashed in the state and set off a massive explosion.
The accident on the BNSF Railway, the fourth such explosion in North America involving crude oil trains, has fed mounting concerns over public safety as the rail industry sharply increases the use of rail to transport surging crude production in North Dakota, Texas and Colorado.
Following the latest derailment and crash, which forced the evacuation of more than 1,000 residents from the town of Casselton, the National Transportation Safety Board has launched the nation's first broad examination of the safety of moving petroleum by rail.
Trains carrying oil have multiplied across the country as environmental concerns and political maneuvering have delayed approval of a major new pipeline to transport oil to Gulf Coast refineries. The issue may be most crucial for cities in the West, which were often founded and developed by railroads so that main lines go directly through the centers of today's urban areas.
Crude oil shipments by rail have shot up 25-fold in the last several years as producers rush oil from newly developing shale fields to market. California alone has seen a fourfold increase over the last year, with current shipments of about 200,000 barrels a month.
Refinery operators this...
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Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Clothing Brands Sidestep Blame for Safety Lapses

From a sleek gray distribution center near Barcelona, the global fashion brand Mango ships 60 million garments in a year. Automated conveyor belts whir through the building like subway lines, sorting and organizing blouses, sweaters and other items to be shipped around the world. Human hands barely touch the clothes.

Five thousand miles away in Bangladesh, the Phantom Tac factory in the industrial suburb of Savar was a hive of human hands. Hundreds of men and women hunched over sewing machines to produce garments in an assembly line system unchanged for years. Speed was also essential, but that just meant people had to work faster. 

Last spring, as it pushed forward with global expansion plans, Mango turned to Phantom Tac to produce a sample order of polo shirts and other items. Then, on April 24, the Rana Plaza factory complex collapsed, killing more than 1,100 people in the deadliest disaster in garment industry history, and destroying Phantom Tac and other operations in the building.

Now, eight months later, the question is what responsibility Mango and other brands should bear toward the victims of Rana Plaza, a disaster that exposed the murkiness and lack of accountability in the global supply chain for clothes. Under intense international pressure, four brands agreed last week to help finance a landmark $40 million compensation fund for the victims.

But many other brands, including Mango, have so far refused to contribute to the...

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Thursday, December 26, 2013

Federal judge rules proof of direct causation unnecessary for BP oil spill claimants

Today's post is shared from jurist.org

[JURIST] US District Judge Carl Barbier for the US District Court Eastern District of Louisiana [official website] ruled [order, PDF] on Tuesday that BP [corporate website] could not require businesses to provide proof their economic losses were directly caused by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill [JURIST news archive] under the terms of their prior settlement agreement. Under the $9.2 billion settlement, BP had agreed that businesses in certain geographical regions were presumed to have economic losses from the oil spill if those losses followed a specific pattern. BP had challenged those terms [Bloomberg report], arguing that businesses could only recover if their damages directly linked to the spill, and stating that spill payments had been wrongly inflated through fake claims and poorly calculated economic losses. Barbier wrote that "the delays that would result from having to engage in a claim-by-claim analysis of whether each claim is 'fairly traceable' to the oil spill...are the very delays that the Settlement, indeed all class settlements, are intended to avoid" and that not only was the framework BP previously agreed "an efficient and 'economically appropriate' method of determining causation," but that a showing of direct causation "would bring the claims administration process to a virtual standstill." BP has indicated that it will appeal the ruling. However, Barbier did side with BP on one...

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Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Self-Promotion Watch: Lead and Crime in Postwar America

Today's post was shared by Mother Jones and comes from www.motherjones.com


I'm usually a little reticent about tooting my own horn, but since I've always had a lot of respect for James Surowiecki, I was sort of chuffed to see this in his year-end roundup of his favorite business stories:

Kevin Drum’s brilliant Mother Jones piece, “America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead,” explores the relationship between lead in the environment and crime (and a host of other social ills). It is not, I guess, a classic business story. But it’s a rigorous and enormously enlightening look at how businesses’ and regulators’ choices—in this case, the decision to keep lead in gasoline and paint—end up shaping society in ways that few expect. I’m not entirely sure that lead explains the entire drop in crime we’ve seen in cities across America. But Drum has certainly convinced me that getting lead out of the environment is one of the best, and most cost-effective, social interventions that regulators can make.
Thanks, James! More here for those who want to dive into some of the other reaction to the lead-crime story, as well as a few items that got left on the cutting room floor.
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Sunday, December 22, 2013

Drilling down on the necessity of dental X-rays

Dental x-rays
When my son and daughter were youngsters, once a year I'd have a disagreement with their pediatric dentist. He wanted to do routine annual X-rays, and I would protest because neither child ever had any cavities. His response: Dental X-rays are an important diagnostic tool, representing a small speck in the sea of radiation that we receive by inhabiting planet Earth.
It turns out we both were right. Dental X-rays are essential for detecting serious oral and systemic health problems, and generally the amount of radiation is very low. But new thinking on dental X-rays is that the "one size fits all" schedule is outdated.
"The notion of bite-wing X-rays every year and a full set of X-rays every three years for every patient should go in the garbage can," says Stuart White, a dentist and professor emeritus at the UCLA School of Dentistry. Instead, decisions should be made individually.
Emphasizing that "without dental X-rays we would go back 120 years, and disease detection would be primitive and awful," White says dentists must strive to minimize unnecessary exposure.
And this is where the discussion gets complicated because the amount of radiation you receive depends on how the dentist takes pictures of your teeth.
For example, if your dentist uses slow film and round collimation (the piece of equipment placed near your face during X-rays), you're going to get approximately double the dose that you would from digital imagery and rectangular...
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