Workers' Compensation

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Federal Workers Nationwide Protest Government Shutdown

The US Capitol is photographed through a chain fence in Washington, DC, on September 30, 2013 (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque).

The US government shut down at midnight as the Republican-controlled House continued to demand changes to Obamacare, and in response workers all across the country are protesting the GOP’s actions.
Nearly 100 government employees rallied in downtown Chicago at Federal Plaza on Monday to protest the shutdown, the first in seventeen years, calling Congress’ actions, “political theater of the absurd.”
Fox Chicago reports workers carried signs reading: “Jobs Not Furloughs.”

When asked about the impact of a shutdown, a spokesperson for Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office responded vaguely: “I think we all know what that looks like.”
The Chicago Tribune offered some more specifics: “The early prevailing wisdom is that the Chicago area should be able to weather a short-term shutdown largely unscathed but that the impact will become more apparent the longer federal funding is suspended.”
And the Sun-Times reports that if employees considered “non-essential to national health safety and security” are furloughed, it will be “more difficult or impossible” to get a passport, a gun permit, or a new Social Security card.
Chris Black, who workers for the EPA, told CBS that a shutdown would do more than just furlough workers. A shutdown will also affect the jobs they do.
“I’m involved...

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THE TRUTH ABOUT CHEATIN’ AND LYIN’

Today's post comes from guest author Susan C. Andrews, from Causey Law Firm.

You hear it all over the place these days: there are lots of people out there who lied and cheated to get Social Security Disability (SSD) benefits. I’m here to tell you that is a myth. You don’t have to drill down very far to find out differently. I should know, from where I sit, as an attorney who handles SSD cases. Where I sit most days is in front of a big pile of medical records—I mean HUNDREDS of pages of medical records, all belonging to the same person. You see, some of my clients have just one great big medical issue—like cancer, or Multiple Sclerosis, or Parkinson’s, and many of my clients have multiple medical problems. Either way, they have spent more time in doctors' offices and hospitals than any of us would ever choose to do.

There is a mistaken notion floating around out there that a person can just waltz into Social Security, claim to be disabled, and voila—he’s granted benefits!

There is a mistaken notion floating around out there that a person can just waltz into Social Security, claim to be disabled, and voila—he’s granted benefits! Nothing could be further from the truth. The burden of proof is on the claimant (the person claiming benefits) to show that he or she is disabled from engaging in substantial gainful activity (SGA) for a period of at least 12 continuous months. More about SGA in a bit. That proof starts with medical records, and diagnoses made by doctors. Self-diagnosing just doesn’t cut it, even if you’ve read up on your condition all over the internet, and you’re absolutely positive you know what’s wrong with you! Sometimes we get calls from people who do not have health insurance, and even though they have a serious medical condition, they have been unable to access much in the way of health care. Sadly, some of those folks who should be able to qualify for benefits do not, because they simply do not have the necessary treatment records to document the seriousness of their conditions.
As mentioned above, Social Security’s definition of disability is the inability, due to one or more medical impairments, to engage in substantial gainful activity for a period of at least 12 continuous months. Social Security defines SGA in part by a dollar figure that usually goes up a little every year. In 2013 it is $1,040. Social Security looks at a person’s GROSS earnings, not net earnings or take-home pay. So if I’m able to gross $1,040 or more per month, I can engage in substantial gainful activity and I do not qualify for SSD. This concept is important especially for individuals with progressive conditions.
Take, for example, a person diagnosed with Parkinson’s. One famous example is the actor Michael J. Fox. His Parkinson’s affects his functioning, but he is still working. Many people with progressive conditions continue to work for some time after receiving their diagnosis. At some point, progression of the disease may force some of them to go to part-time work. When the hours worked decrease, their earnings may no longer qualify as SGA. Or—and I see this a great deal in my practice—some people begin to have more bad days than good days, and work performance is impacted. There are days so bad that they really have no choice but to call in sick. Then this begins to happen more frequently than a couple of days a month. In my experience, at that point most employers become very unhappy campers. Not only are the employees taking sick leave faster than they are accruing it, they can’t tell their employers ahead of time which days they will wake up with an exacerbation of symptoms that keep them in bed, or at least in their bathrobe, all day.
Which brings me to my final point: Many of my clients look okay to the casual passer-by. Take the guy with a serious heart problem. Well sure, if I followed him around for half a day, I’d see that he can barely exert himself without getting out of breath. But if I just passed by, he might look fine. And the day he spends at home in his bathrobe because he can hardly catch his breath—I’m not going to see him at all when he’s having one of those really lousy days. His condition may be largely invisible.
To sum it up, I’d say there’s a bit of wisdom in being slow to judge. Thank goodness we take our good health for granted—it’d be a miserable existence if I spent too much time worrying about getting sick before it actually happened. But, of course, serious illness can strike any of us when we least expect it. And on the other side of that defining moment, the world can look a whole lot different.
Photo credit: Gemma Grace / Foter / CC BY-NC

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Worker error causes Fukushima leak

Today's post from the BBC.

This aerial photo shows the storage tank, fifth from left at left plot, which was found to be overflowing, at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant at Okuma town in Fukushima prefecture,...

Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has a new leak of radioactive water after workers overfilled a storage tank, its operator says.

The workers miscalculated the tank's capacity as it was tilted on unlevel ground, plant operator Tepco said.

It said around 430 litres (100 gallons) of water may have leaked from the tank, and could have flowed into the sea.

The plant has experienced several leaks since being crippled by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

One of the largest leaks took place in August, when Tepco discovered a leak of at least 300 tonnes of highly radioactive water at a different part of the plant.

The latest leak was discovered by workers late on Wednesday.

Tepco official Masayuki Ono said: "We would like to apologise that we have to announce that we've had another leak in our tanks today."

"This is partly because we've had to fill our tanks to the brim in order to deal with the difficult management of rain water overflow following [a typhoon]," he added.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that Tepco had failed to deal with the leaks successfully.

"It's actually leaking so of course we can't say that [Tepco] have been properly dealing with the issue. It should not be leaking at all," he said.

The 2011 disaster knocked out cooling systems to the nuclear plant's reactors, three of which melted down.

Water is now being pumped in to cool the reactors, but storing the resultant large quantities of radioactive water has proved a...

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Nurses Prone to Injuries With Heavier Patients

Today's post was shared by votersinjuredatwork and comes from abcnews.go.com

Loretta Pierce is only 46, but she has already retired from nursing in favor of a desk job.

After years of lifting heavy patients and equipment that resulted in a herniated disc, she said she knew her body just couldn't handle the work anymore.

"I'm almost fearful as a nurse of going back to taking care of patients unless I have proper equipment," said Pierce, who worked in organ recovery, the intensive care unit and the emergency room. "It's kind of sad when you have to end your nursing career because you can't physically do the job anymore because your body's so beat up."

Nursing aides, orderlies and attendants suffer more musculoskeletal injuries than people in any other profession – including firefighters, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Registered nurses also edure more of these injuries than the average worker.

Even worse, patients are getting heavier -- especially in the Midwest where Pierce spent her career, she said. She recalled taking a patient to a dock to weigh him because no scale was available in the hospital that could do the job.

Still, she'd never think of saying "no" to helping a fellow nurse move a patient, no matter the toll on her body.

"It's kind of ingrained in you when a colleague asks for help, you go and you help. You don't even think twice because they're in trouble," said Pierce, who works in Nebraska. "We're a team. You don't leave a man down."

The American Nurses Association has been pressing for...

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What Happens When The Government Shuts Down 94 Percent of the EPA

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

Tuesday morning, 94 percent of the Environmental Protection Agency's 16,000 workers were furloughed due to the government shutdown.

"They basically lock things up, batten things down, which takes a few hours, then a vast majority of people are sent home," says consultant Dina Kruger, who worked at the EPA during the 1996 government shutdown.

To make sense of what it means that over 15,000 EPA employees are now sitting at home instead of working, consider how many facets of the environment the agency has its hands in: The EPA monitors air quality, regulates pesticides and waste, cleans up hazardous chemical spills, and ensures that people have safe drinking water, among other things. Now, according to the plan it laid out for the shutdown, only some workers will be on hand to respond to emergencies and to monitor labs and property.

That means the EPA will temporarily halt cleanup at 507 superfund sites across the country, the agency told the Huffington Post. Sites where the EPA was cleaning up hazardous chemicals are shuttered in any situation where closing them down won't be an immediate threat to the surroundings.

This will slow down cleanups and tack on additional costs that will accrue as these contaminated sites are left to their own devices, says Scott Slesinger, legislative director at the National Resources Defense Council and a former EPA employee. "The only sites that would be exempted would be those that, if they stopped working...

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EPA Finalizes Cleanup Plan for Gowanus Canal Superfund Site in Brooklyn, New York; $506 Million Cleanup Will Remove Contaminated Sediment and Create Jobs

Today's post was shared by US EPA News and comes from yosemite.epa.gov

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has finalized a plan to clean up the Gowanus Canal Superfund site in Brooklyn, New York, one of the nation’s most seriously contaminated bodies of water. The final plan, announced today on the banks of the canal by EPA Regional Administrator Judith A. Enck with Congressmember Nydia Velázquez, state and local officials and community representatives, will require the removal of contaminated sediment and the capping of dredged areas.

The plan also includes controls to reduce sewage overflows and other land-based sources of contamination from compromising the cleanup. With community input, EPA has decided on the option in the proposed plan that will require the disposal of the least contaminated sediment at a facility out of the area rather than building a disposal facility in the water near Red Hook. The cost of the cleanup plan is currently estimated to be $506 million.

“More than 150 years of industrial waste, storm water runoff and sewer overflows turned the Gowanus Canal into one of the most extensively contaminated water bodies in the nation, threatening people’s health and the quality of their daily lives,” said Judith A. Enck, EPA Regional Administrator.

“The cleanup plan announced today by EPA will reverse the legacy of water pollution in the Gowanus. The plan is a...

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Many Nursing Homes Operate Without Adequate Sprinkler Systems

Today's post was shared by The New Old Age and comes from newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com

A body was removed from the Greenwood Health Center in Hartford, Conn., after a fire in 2003.

A body was removed from the Greenwood Health Center in Hartford, Conn., after a fire in 2003.

Associated PressA body was removed from the Greenwood Health Center in Hartford, Conn., after a fire in 2003.

Now and then, you learn something about caring for the elderly that stops you in your tracks.

Like this: Until last month, federal regulations did not require all nursing homes to have automatic sprinkler systems.

It’s a bit staggering, isn’t it? Automatic sprinklers, the most effective protection against fires, have been mandated in any new nursing home certified by Medicare and Medicaid, or in new construction added to an existing facility, since 2000. But for older nursing homes, there was no such regulation until August 2008 — and the industry, complaining about high costs, was given five years to comply.

That deadline passed last month, but more than 1,100 older nursing homes still do not have sprinklers or have only “partial” systems, federal records show.

Most of these places have some sprinklers — perhaps only in laundries and kitchens, perhaps in residents’ rooms but not hallways. What “partial” means in this context is unclear, a Medicare spokeswoman told me. But about 125 homes have no sprinklers, including 18 in Illinois, 16 in Texas and 13 in North Carolina. (You can see the list, though it may contain some reporting inaccuracies and may not reflect very recent changes.)

A fire in a nursing home is a horrifying...

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Report Finds 8 Million California Residents Lived in Poverty in 2011

Today's post was shared by votersinjuredatwork and comes from www.californiahealthline.org

There were about 8 million California residents living in poverty in 2011, according to a new report that factored in health care and other costs, the Riverside Press-Enterprise reports.
The figure is significantly higher than federal estimates of nearly 6 million state residents living in poverty that year.

Federal poverty estimates for California and other states use a formula from 1964 that defines poverty as income less than three times the cost of a "minimum diet," which would have been $22,811 for a family of four in 2011.
However, some observers have called this method outdated because food is a smaller part of most families' budgets than it was 50 years ago.

The study was conducted by researchers at the Public Policy Institute of California and the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality.
Unlike federal figures, the study's poverty estimates include:

Government benefits;
Housing prices;
Health care costs; and
Other expenditures (Olson, Riverside Press-Enterprise, 9/30).

According to the report, the poverty rate in California was about 22% in 2011, the highest in the U.S. and significantly higher than the official rate of 16% (Holland, Los Angeles Times, 9/30).
When the study factored in cost of living:

Poverty rates increased in places with high housing costs and other expenses, such as Orange County and the San Francisco Bay Area; and
Poverty rates decreased in areas where housing is less expensive, such as some Northern California and...

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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

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION]

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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