Workers' Compensation

Thursday, October 3, 2013

New Orleans' 2014 budget projections show sharp increase in workers’ compensation costs

Today's post is share from thelensnola.org/

The cost of administering the city of New Orleans workers’ compensation program is projected to increase sharply next year — nearly six times for some employees, according to 2014 budget projections shared with The Lens.

On Thursday, Courtney Bagneris, the city’s interim risk manager, is expected to give the City Council budget committee a preliminary report on an audit of the program, said Lauren Hotard, a spokeswoman for Councilwoman Stacy Head. That should include some explanation for the increase, she said.

$16 million

Budgeted for workers’ comp claims in 2013

$24 million

Expected claims in 2013

City Budget Director Cary Grant told the budget committee in August that the city was experiencing a “large uptick” in workers’ compensation claims this year. The city budgeted $16 million for such expenses this year; he said he expected claims to exceed $24 million.

While significant, that’s nowhere near the sixfold increase projected in next year’s budget, from about $300 to $1,700 per employee. Grant did not address the 2014 projections in his presentation.

Such an increase would cost the city about $2.5 million more in next year’s budget of about $500 million.

Head revealed

the 2014 price jump during an Aug. 30 Lens live chat on the city’s 2014 budget, writing that the Council Fiscal Office had just informed councilmembers of the increase for their staff’s personnel costs. “We don’t...

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Exercise 'can be as good as pills'

Medication can be replaced by exercise reports the the BBC. Today's post is shared from bbc.org.

Exercise can be as good a medicine as pills for people with conditions such as heart disease, a study has found.

The work in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) looked at hundreds of trials involving nearly 340,000 patients to assess the merits of exercise and drugs in preventing death.

Physical activity rivalled some heart drugs and outperformed stroke medicine.

The findings suggest exercise should be added to prescriptions, say the researchers.

Man preparing to jog

Experts stressed that patients should not ditch their drugs for exercise - rather, they should use both in tandem.

Too few adults currently get enough exercise. Only a third of people in England do the recommended 2.5 hours or more of moderate-intensity activity, such as cycling or fast walking, every week.

In contrast, prescription drug rates continue to rise.

There were an average of 17.7 prescriptions for every person in England in 2010, compared with 11.2 in 2000.

For the study, scientists based at the London School of Economics, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute at Harvard Medical School and Stanford University School of Medicine trawled medical literature to find any research that compared exercise with pills as a therapy.

They identified 305 trials to include in their analysis. These trials looked at managing conditions such as existing heart disease, stroke rehabilitation, heart failure and pre-diabetes.

When they studied the data as a whole, they found exercise and drugs were comparable in terms of death rates.

But there were...

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Asthma related to cleaning agents: a clinical insight

Cleaning workers are exposed to many substances ans irritants.Today post is from bmj.org.

In recent years, there has been a growing concern about the potential role of exposure to cleaning products in the initiation and aggravation of asthma.

Epidemiological surveys have consistently documented increased prevalence3–5 and incidence6–8 rates of asthma in workers exposed to cleaning materials and/or disinfectants, especially in domestic cleaners3,4 and healthcare workers.

In addition, some studies have reported an increased risk of work-related asthma symptoms in exposed workers.

However, there is still limited knowledge on the specific exposures and pathophysiological mechanisms involved in cleaning-related asthma.

Cleaning materials typically contain a wide variety of ingredients, some of which are respiratory irritants, such as chlorine-releasing agents and ammonia, while others are potential airway sensitizers.

Asthma in cleaners has been mostly associated with the irritant effects of cleaning products, which may exacerbate asthma and, at high exposure levels, cause acute irritant-induced asthma (or ‘reactive airways dysfunction syndrome’)

Nevertheless, occasional case reports have ascribed occupational asthma (OA) due to specific airway hypersensitivty to components of detergents or disinfectants.2 Overall the determinants of cleaning-related asthma symptoms remain largely uncertain since most...

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Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Lead Exposure: OSHA Cites USA Brass Company Inc. of Bozeman, Mont., for overexposing workers to lead

The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration has cited USA Brass Company Inc. in Bozeman for 10 serious violations, with $45,500 in proposed penalties, after a May inspection conducted under the agency's national emphasis program for lead found workers overexposed to the metal. The company buys and provides brass for individual reloaders and commercial ammunition manufacturers.

Staff from OSHA's Billings Area Office found serious violations, including failure to conduct initial determinations of worker overexposure to lead; implement engineering and work practice controls to reduce lead exposure; provide workers with adequate respiratory protection and personal protective clothing; prohibit food and beverages from areas with excessive accumulations of lead; and train workers on lead hazards.

"The toxic effects of occupational exposure to lead have been well-known for a long time, but this employer did not have basic safeguards to protect workers against this hazard," said Jeff Funke, the agency's area director in Billings. "Employees exposed to lead must be evaluated to assess exposure levels accurately and, if necessary, implement engineering controls to train and ensure the use of personal protective clothing and equipment, including respirators."

Other serious violations include failing to implement respiratory protection, hearing conservation and hazard communication programs; have adequate housekeeping procedures; perform required medical examinations; and post required signs in hazardous areas. A serious violation occurs when there is substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result from a hazard about which the employer knew or should have known.

USA Brass was also cited for one other-than-serious violation for not certifying forklift operators' training and evaluations. An other-than-serious violation is one that has a direct relationship to job safety and health, but probably would not cause death or serious physical harm.

The company has 15 business days from receipt of the citations and proposed penalties to comply, request an informal conference with OSHA's area director, or contest the findings before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Electronic Filing: The Ideal System for Workers' Compensation

Judicial systems throughout the country have been working diligently to obtain the the "best" electronic filing and docketing systems for workers' compensation systems. The Federal Court program, certainly by the devopment of PACER, and the local District Courts and Appellate Circuits, though their Electronic Court Filing (ECF) systems, have established a systems that are stellar. Working on budgets, funded by no or minimal filing fees, and a huge volume of matters, with specialized interests, the state workers' compensation programs have had a more difficult start and a rougher road to operationalize electronic filing programs and docketing systems. Florida has produced a system that works, provides transparency and success. Today's post, authored by Judge David Langham, Deputy Chief Judge of Compensation Claims for the Florida Office of Judges of Compensation Claims and Division of Administrative Hearings, describes the delicate balance to achieve this result, by balancing the cost of the system and the productivity results.

Pennsylvania launched an integrated electronic management system last week. The Workers' Compensation Automation and Integration System, or WCAIS is described as the first system of its kind. It integrates data-sharing among three Pennsylvania state agencies, the Bureau of Workers' Compensation with the Workers' Compensation Appeal Board and the Workers' Compensation Office of Adjudication."We do not have such an integrated...

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IMR: What Was The California Legislature Thinking?

Today's post is authored by David DePaolo, a national leading commentator on workers' compensation with special expertise in the California system, and shared from http://daviddepaolo.blogspot.com. The Independent Medical Review system was theoretically contrived to contain cost and make the California system friendlier and more expeditious. Quickly enacted, without full debate and comments from stakeholders, the system has become stymied and yet another hurtle in the system. Read David' thoughtful analysis.......

The debate about the big volume of Independent Medical Review requests in California's new system that were recently reported is all over the map.

Some say that the provider, Maximus, is at fault and many support the Division of Workers' Compensation's proposal for new time lines and penalties for various actions and/or inactions.
There's also plenty of blame slinging going on with employer representatives accusing the applicant attorneys, applicant attorneys implicating carriers/administrators, and everyone else pointing fingers at each other.

But Steven Cardinale, co-founder and Managing Director of CID Management, a Utilization Review company, put it best to me in an email when he said, "SB 863 was conceived in such a way as to assure the overuse of IMR."

I have to agree with Mr. Cardinale - none of the participants in the California system is really to blame for the huge volume going to IMR because the law essentially guaranteed that this would...

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Do Cities Need Texting Zones?

This post is shared from Nicole Ferraro, Future Cities from www.informationweek.com

This week, New York's governor announced a plan to put "texting zones" on state highways. It got me thinking about whether cities need to do the same.

First, a bit about the news: In an effort to reduce the number of distracted drivers on the roads of New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo revealed a plan to put "texting zones" on the New York State Thruway and state highways, where drivers can pull over and respond to text messages.

This is, in part, a response to the fact that New York has seen a 365% increase in tickets issued to distracted drivers between the summers of 2012 and 2013 (In 2013, 16,027 people were pulled over for talking on cellphones, and 5,553 for texting, as compared to 4,284 and 924, respectively, in 2012).

As Cuomo said in a statement, "With this new effort, we are sending a clear message to drivers that there is no excuse to take your hands off the wheel and eyes off the road because your text can wait until the next Texting Zone."

Distracted driving is a huge issue for cities. Indeed, just last week we discussed a social media campaign launched by the Mayor of Houston, Texas, to unite Texan cities against texting while driving. With pedestrian death on the rise in cities across the US, there's an absolute need to curb driver distractions.

However, there's something about Cuomo's plan that bugs me -- mainly that, in a way, it caves to the compulsion drivers have to...

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An Official Statement on Environmental Toxins and Pregnancy

Today's post was shared by RWJF PublicHealth and comes from www.theatlantic.com

For years, the debate over restricting the stew of industrial chemicals that we live in has suffered from a case of he said, she said.

Environmental groups sounded the alarm about the thousands of chemicals in our air, water, food, housewares, and shampoo that science suggests — but doesn’t outright prove — could make us sick. They warned about such commonly used substances as BPA (in cans and plastics), fire retardants (in furniture), and phthalates (in cosmetics). Chemical industry representatives countered that there is no clear evidence that their products are unsafe, and tighter regulation would squash innovation.

But now it’s about pregnant moms and unborn babies.

For the first time ever, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) this week came out with a strong statement about the risks of environmental toxins to pregnant women and fetuses. Also for the first time, the group is going so far as to urge individual doctors to advocate for policy changes to protect women and babies from exposure.

“The scientific evidence over the last 15 years shows that exposure to toxic environmental agents before conception and during pregnancy can have significant and long-lasting effects on reproductive health,” wrote ACOG. Another group of reproduction specialists, the American Society...

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Bill Creating Clear Guidelines in Dispensing of Opiod Medications Introduced in New Jersey Senate

The post today is authored by John H. Geaney, Esq. of the NJ Bar, and is shared via njworkerscompblog.com

Opioid medications have become a major problem in the New Jersey workers’ compensation system. The number of workers being prescribed opioids has increased dramatically along with other attendant problems, such as addictions to the medications, excessive periods of use, and large numbers of unused opioid pills due to over-prescribing.

Every workers’ compensation professional can attest to these and other problems with opioid medications, not to mention cases where urine testing shows no trace of opioids in the system despite repeated renewals of opioid prescriptions.

On September 30, 2013, Senator Raymond Lesniak and Senator Stephen Sweeney introduced a bill in the New Jersey Senate proposing that medical expenses shall not include coverage of opioid drugs unless the prescribing doctor does the following:

1) takes a thorough medical history and physical examination focusing on the cause of the patient’s pain;

2) does a complete assessment of the potential addiction of the patient to opioids, which would include a baseline urine test and assessment of past and current depression, anxiety disorders and other mood disorders associated with risk of opioid abuse;

3) provides a written treatment plan with measurable objectives, a list of all medications being taken and dosages, a justification for the continued use of opioid...

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Monday, September 30, 2013

Oklahoma: Gov. Fallin's picks for workers comp commission lack experience

Today's post is shared from Tulsworld.com

Gov. Mary Fallin's first two appointments to the state's new workers compensation system have no experience in workers compensation law.

And that's OK, says Fallin spokesman Alex Weintz.
"As a manager and a business leader, Troy Wilson is acutely aware of how workers compensation affects businesses," said Weintz. "As the former director of the Department of Commerce, Jonna Kirschner knows what an obstacle workers comp costs can be to businesses looking to locate here."

Wilson, named by Fallin to be the first chairman of the new Workers Compensation Commission, and Kirschner, who is expected to be one of the commission's first administrative law judges, get high marks all around for integrity and general ability.

But the enabling legislation creating the new system specifies that commissioners "must have been involved in the workers compensation field for at least three years."
Judges, the law says, "shall have not less than three years of workers compensation experience prior to appointment."

Wilson is a retired banker, businessman and Xerox executive who was retired comfortably in Florida at the time of his appointment.

Kirschner is an attorney who specialized in corporate law before joining the Commerce Department. She is also the daughter of state Supreme Court Justice Yvonne Kauger, which could complicate the court's consideration of a lawsuit challenging the new system's constitutionality.

Weintz said questioning Wilson's...

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Will history of health hazards be repeated at new Wisconsin iron mine?

Today's post was shared from The Pump Handle....

The long-time residents of Iron County, Wisconsin who make up the Iron County Joint Impacts Mining Committee say the open-pit iron mine planned for the Penokee Hills of northern Wisconsin – a range that extends into Michigan where it’s known as the Gogebic Range – will bring much needed good jobs and economic development. Such jobs, the committee told a group of visiting journalists in August, have been lacking since the last Wisconsin iron mines in the area closed in the early and mid-1960s.

The jobs the mine would bring are the type needed to keep local communities’ young people from moving away, said committee members. Environmental advocates and other area residents, including many of the region’s tribal leaders, oppose the mine for what they say will be devastating impacts, particularly to the area’s waterways and wetlands.

The proposed mine made national news this summer after masked activists harassed mining company personnel and armed security guards were hired to patrol the property. There’s also been considerable controversy over a new law that was passed that will help facilitate the mine. What have not yet received much attention are the potential occupational health hazards of mining and processing the taconite ore the mine is expected to yield.

Now in the permitting and exploratory stage of development by Gogebic Taconite LLC – a subsidiary of a company called Foresight Energy that has coal mining operations in...

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Open for Business Tomorrow: Healthcare.gov

Tomorrow marks an historic day in US history. The Federal government launches insurance enrollment under The Affordable Care Act.

Visit Healthcare.gov for further information.

Sunday, September 29, 2013

BP Trial in 2nd Phase, to Set Amount of Oil Spilled

Post shared from the nytimes.com.

With billions of dollars in penalties at stake, the civil trial of the British oil company BP begins its second phase on Monday, which will set the amount of oil that spilled into the Gulf of Mexico from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion that killed 11 workers and soiled hundreds of miles of beaches.

The government will argue that a total 4.2 million barrels of oil was discharged into the sea over 87 days, the equivalent of nearly one-quarter of all the oil that is consumed in the United States in a day. BP will counter that the number was closer to 2.45 million barrels. This phase of the trial will also determine if BP prepared adequately for a blowout and if it responded properly once the oil started flowing.

Both sides will present their case in Federal District Court in New Orleans using competing technical calculations over the next four weeks. Hanging in the balance are Clean Water Act fines that range from a maximum of $1,100 for every barrel spilled through simple negligence to as much as $4,300 a barrel if a company is found to have been grossly negligent.

“This will be largely a battle of experts,” Blaine G. LeCesne, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans.

The first phase of the trial, which took place over two months this year, centered on whether BP and its contractors were guilty of gross negligence — tantamount to wanton and reckless behavior — in causing the blowout of the Macondo well.

Judge Carl J....

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The Government Shutdown is a Kick-In-Gut to Workers' Compensation

Workers' Compensation programs will be impacted by a Government shutdown because of both the offset provisions of the Social Security Act and the Medicare Secondary Payer Act (MSP). Even The SMART Act, recently enacted to hopefully establish a more efficient collection process will be derailed.

As the US House of Representatives, under Republican leadership influenced by The Tea Party, likened in Aaron Sorkin's HBO program, The Newsroom, as "The American Taliban," passed legislation to shutdown the US Government this Tuesday, serious concern exists as to the consequences of the shutdown on workers' compensation programs throughout the nation.

In many States, whether or not a reverse offset exists, it is essential to determine what a claimant's Average Current Earnings (ACE) are to calculate, and reach a final determination of temporary and permanent disability, in a state workers' compensation claim. The access to those numbers will become difficult to obtain because of administrative rollbacks, and anticipated further delays in claims processing. Even though Federal payments will be forthcoming under protective measures, the claims process will be derailed.

Likewise, the process to obtain conditional payment information will be delayed or non-existent. The provisions of the Medicare Secondary Payer Act mandating reimbursement to The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will be put on hold. Similarly, reviews for future medical compromises embodied in the Workers' Compensation Medicare Set-aside Agreements (WCMSA) will be delayed just because of administrative cutbacks in the claims system, including the appeals process.

The recently enacted provisions of The SMART Act. long sought by a coalition of cottage industries, and compensation parties, to the reimbursement process itself, will face its first major challenge to implementation as the Internet web-portable becomes non-functional. Recently proposed final Rules will face delay in implementation as the exchange of comments under the rulemaking process become further delayed in the process of submission and response.

Overall, the workers who most need the system to function, and who waited the longest time, in waiting for final adjudication of their claims, will become victim of the process. No matter how long the shutdown extends, the Federal action will highlight the continued deterioration of the complex patchwork process know as workers' compensation. The now antiquated, and once expeditious and remedial insurance system, will have suffered yet another devastating blow in its attempt to survive in a radically changing economic and socio-political system.
....

Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson). For over 4 decades the Law Offices of Jon L Gelman 1.973.696.7900 jon@gelmans.com have been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered occupational accidents and illnesses.

Saturday, September 28, 2013

World Trade Center Health Program; Addition of Prostate Cancer to the List of WTC-Related Health Conditions

Recently the Federal Government approved benefits for prostate Cancer for those eligible for 9-11 Health Fund Claims. The current deadline for some is October, 2013. See the links below the article to learn how to file a claim. Today's post was shared by Safe Healthy Workers and comes from www.federalregister.gov

This final rule is effective October 21, 2013.

Paul Middendorf, Senior Health Scientist, 1600 Clifton Rd. NE., MS: E-20,...

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Judge Orders New Jersey to Allow Gay Marriage

Dependency benefits under the NJ workers' compensation system are going to expand.

A New Jersey judge ruled on Friday that the state must allow same-sex couples to marry, saying that not doing so deprives them of rights that were guaranteed by the United States Supreme Court in June.

It is the first time a court has struck down a state’s refusal to legalize same-sex marriage as a direct result of the Supreme Court ruling, and with lawsuits pending in other states, it could presage other successful challenges across the country.

The decision was a rebuff to Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican who vetoed a bill passed by the Legislature last year that would have allowed same-sex couples to marry. His office said it would appeal to the state’s highest court. And he is likely to seek a stay preventing same-sex marriages from beginning on Oct. 21, as the judge ordered.

New Jersey was particularly ripe for a challenge after the Supreme Court ruling, because of a previous ruling by the state’s highest court in 2006. In that decision, in the case Lewis v. Harris, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled unanimously that same-sex couples were entitled to all of the rights and benefits of marriage. But the court stopped short of saying they had a fundamental right to marry, and in an unusual step instructed the Legislature to define how to confer equal protection.

“The ineligibility of same-sex couples for federal benefits is currently harming same-sex couples in New Jersey in a wide range of contexts,” Judge Mary C. Jacobson of State...

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You Can Have Any Job You Want, as Long as It's Waitress

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.businessweek.com

Photograph by Marc Spector

It’s almost 6 p.m. on a Friday, and the tables near the bar at the Hamilton in downtown Washington are getting crowded. That means Victoria Honard is busy.
Honard, 22, who graduated from Syracuse University in May, works about 25 hours a week as a waitress at the restaurant while she looks for a public policy job. A dean’s-list student, she moved to Washington four days after graduation with the hope of finding a position at a think tank or policy-related organization. She’s applied to about 20 prospective employers.
“The response has been minimal,” says Honard, whose academic work was in education, health, and human services. “There are two ways of looking at it. I could be extremely frustrated and be bitter, or I can make the most of it, and I’m trying to take the latter approach.”
Unemployment data appear to show big advances for women. The jobless rate in August for females 20 years and older was 6.3 percent, the lowest since December 2008, compared with 7.1 percent for men. As recently as January, the rate was 7.3 percent for both genders, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The downside is that the gains for women have been largely in low-paying jobs such as waitressing, in-home health care, food preparation, and housekeeping. About 60 percent of the increase in women’s employment from 2009 to 2012 was in jobs that pay less than $10.10 an hour,...

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Thursday, October 3, 2013

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