Latest Workers' Compensation Headlines
All the headlines from our Workers' Compensation Topic Page, ordered by recency.
Medical Messing up the Mix in California Workers’ Comp
May 21 2012 // If you hunt for answers among California’s myriad experts and those with informed opinions on workers’ compensation and ask them to name the biggest problem with the system, a majority will cite the rising...
Duration, Severity Drive Workers’ Comp Costs in Louisiana
May 21 2012 // Louisiana Workers’ Compensation Corp. (LWCC) was created by the legislature in 1991 in an effort to stabilize the state’s workers’ compensation system. Today, the private nonprofit mutual insurer is the...
Do Safety Incentives Discourage Reporting of Job Injuries?
May 21 2012 // Many employers are in the dark over whether their safety incentive programs encourage or discourage the reporting of injuries by their employees, or if they have no effect. But a new report says employers, and the federal...
Florida Revises Workers’ Comp Certificates, Audit Laws
May 21 2012 // Florida’s governor has signed legislation streamlining the workers’ compensation certificate process, eliminating mandatory premium audits, and discontinuing refunds for insurers with excess profits. Gov. Rick...
Mixed Messages in Midwest Workers’ Compensation
May 21 2012 // Workers’ compensation insurance carriers saw their premium levels rise in the United States in 2011, but they continued to struggle with combined ratios that are too high. Workers’ compensation insurance...
The Health Workers’ Compensation
May 21 2012 // Injured But Still Standing Like the economy, the workers’ compensation market has suffered in recent years. Results for 2011 were no better than 2010. The good news: results for the market were not worse either. The...
Average Approved WC Loss-Cost Change +2.8% in Northeast in 2012
May 21 2012 // The workers’ comp loss-costs are continuing to go up in most Northeastern states, according to the National Council on Compensation Insurance Inc. Based in Boca Raton, Fla., NCCI analyzes industry trends, prepares...
North Carolina Cost Drivers Studied
May 21 2012 // North Carolina had higher income benefit payments per claim among 16 states in a recent study, slower return to work resulting in longer duration of temporary disability, and larger lump-sum settlements than in many study...
E&O Insights: Why Workers’ Compensation Leads in E&O Claims
May 21 2012 // Every year, errors and omissions (E&O) claims arising out of the placement of workers’ compensation account for approximately 10 percent of all claims. Many of those workers’ comp claims are well in excess...
Mass. Data Shows Affordable Care Act Could Lower WC Costs
May 21 2012 // What would the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 do to the workers’ comp medical care costs? One new study looked at the example from Massachusetts’ healthcare reform for answers. And it...
Controlling Costs by Curtailing Workers’ Comp Fraud
May 21 2012 // While most workers’ compensation claims stem from real instances of on-the-job injuries, there are, unfortunately, people who cheat the system, driving up costs for employers, consumers and insurers. According to the...
Dysfunction in Illinois
May 21 2012 // Illinois’ troubled system for compensating injured state workers hands out money too readily, sometimes without medical evidence to back up a claim and occasionally paying benefits the hurt employee didn’t even...
Michigan Marks 100
May 21 2012 // March 2012 marked the 100th anniversary of the workers’ compensation system in Michigan. Commenting in a video commemorating the anniversary, Michigan Workers’ Compensation Director Kevin Elsenheimer said...
Worker Death Leads to $473K Fine for Illinois Manufacturer
May 20 2012 // A manufacturing plant in Illinois faces a fine of $473,000 after a worker died from chemical burns. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has cited Raani Corp. for failing to...
Texas Company Fined $212K Over Safety Hazards
May 20 2012 // Federal regulators have imposed a fine of more than $200,000 against an aluminum products manufacturing facility in Carrollton, Texas, for safety and health violations. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational...
OSHA Probes Florida Postal Worker’s Mysterious Illness
May 18 2012 // The federal agency that monitors worker safety has opened an investigation into the illness of a U.S. postal worker who became sick after coming into contact with a mysterious package from Yemen. A spokesman for the...
Safety Inspections Don’t Hurt Businesses; Do Lower Workers’ Comp Costs: Study
May 17 2012 // Random inspections of U.S. industrial workplaces lower the risk of workers being injured on the job and have no measurable negative effect on the companies inspected, according to a study in the journal Science. Companies...
Two Workers Hurt in Texas Fracking Tank Site Blast
May 17 2012 // Two workers were hurt in an explosion at a hydraulic fracturing tank site in south Texas early on Wednesday, a sheriff’s dispatcher said. U.S. workplace safety regulators cited the company that owns the site, Vann...
Missouri House Approves Bill on Suing Co-Workers
May 16 2012 // Missouri lawmakers likely will not pass any legislation moving claims related to deadly work-related diseases into the workers’ compensation system, Senate Majority Leader Tom Dempsey said. The state Legislature will...
Report: Workers’ Compensation Premium Grows But Market Results Still ‘Conflicted’
May 14 2012 // Workers’ compensation premium grew by 7.4 percent in 2011, a positive sign for the state of the line. However, the combined ratio for the workers’ comp line remains at an unsustainable level, according to a new...
