2022 Workers’ Comp Award winners showcase adaptability

Impactful workers’ compensation programs evolve in much the same way that species in the natural world adapt to survive and thrive. Similarly, any vibrant ecosystem is supported by a myriad of animals and organisms, and happy, healthy workers know that their employer fosters a thoughtful, thorough system to address on-the-job injuries — an essential component of any successful business or organization.

The risk and disability management professionals of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) may not stand in front of classrooms, but they are educators nonetheless.

“LA Unified exists to educate the children of Los Angeles, so I’m an educator because I support those who teach the children and interact with them,” says Dawn Watkins, director of integrated disability management at LAUSD. “Within our disability management program, we work assertively and aggressively at bringing employees back to work and staffing the schools so they can serve children.”

LAUSD is the nation’s second-largest school district, covering 710 square miles and educating 640,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade at more than 1,400 schools and centers. Such a large organization requires a wide range of occupations, similar to what might be found in a large city, says Watkins. In addition to teachers, the district employs food service workers, groundskeepers, bus drivers, mechanics, police officers, social workers and administrative personnel. Because of the district’s size, scope and complexity, its workers’ compensation challenges are considerable, and comp claims cost the district about $100 million per year.

The district’s risk management department includes more than 70 people, about 20 of whom are engaged in disability management, including workers compensation, oversight, administration, return to work and reasonable accommodations. The disability management department operates with a strong sense of purpose that their work enhances the education of LAUSD’s students. By embracing feedback and implementing programs to further that effort, LAUSD has experienced success in reducing total new claims by 46.6% and saving millions on claims paid, indemnity, medical spend and expenses paid.

Watkins brings valuable experience to her role gained from her time working for California’s State Compensation Insurance Fund, a self-insured utility and a municipality, before joining LAUSD two decades ago. During her career, Watkins developed best practices, wrote policies, created training guides and helped transition hand-written claims processes to software-based systems

“When you work for a public agency in any state in this country, you serve the public trust, and people are impacted by that organization,” says Watkins. “I saw the importance of supporting the employees who do the work, the employees who maintain the parks that so many of our students enjoy, who maintain the roads so that everyone can get where they’re going. I saw our public safety officers and their dedication and their service to all the citizens, to the residents, to the community and they inspired me. Here I thought I was an insurance person and I learned I was really a public agency employee who was dedicated to service and to improving my area of public service.”

To ensure it continues to provide a high level of service, LAUSD’s disability management program has surveyed those employees who have been injured at work every month for the past 10 years using an outside firm not affiliated with the district or its third-party claims administrator. Watkins says they pay close attention to the feedback they get and actively change processes to improve the experience of injured coworkers. According to survey results in 2020-2021, employee satisfaction reached 90.2%, with employees praising access to medical care and communications as strengths of the district’s comp program.

“There are many lessons that we’ve learned over time, an emphasis on collaborating with colleagues within the industry, always looking for best practices and ways to improve,” Watkins. “We’re not beyond improvement.”

One program LAUSD implemented to increase satisfaction and outcomes for injured workers is its nurse triage program. Injured workers have the option of speaking with a nurse to discuss their injuries and symptoms, and to get advice on when and where to seek medical treatment. The same nurse then follows up with the employee to see how they are doing and make sure they understand their treatment plan. The consultation services are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

More than two-thirds of nurse triage calls ended up going to urgent care centers vs. ER treatment facilities. The program has resulted in avoidance of 89 claims due to self-care recommendations and $212,000 saved.

While slips, trips and falls remain the top risk for the district’s employees, the COVID-19 pandemic changed the risk landscape slightly during the past three years. In response to the pandemic, LAUSD developed a comprehensive resource guide that provided site-specific planning forms, reopening models, operational plans, and healthy practices and protocols to give employees guidance and easy access to information around physical distancing, materials sharing and school building protocols. In addition, it created a home office ergonomics guide for employees working from home to ensure a safe remote working environment through proper use of chairs, monitors and keyboards. The district also assisted the community with vaccination clinics and food distribution.

LAUSD addressed air quality in light of California’s increase in wildfire frequency and intensity that have created unsafe air pollution levels at schools. The “Know Your Air Network” guidance is designed for schools to use during emergency events and poor air quality episodes to determine what actions to take.

Through its Safety Seals program, LAUSD encourages engagement with employees to help reduce injuries and celebrate each school’s commitment to safety. Certificates of recognition are earned based on the level of employee safety achieved, and related graphics can be posted on a school’s website and rating levels can be displayed on the school’s annual accountability card.

Other programs the district has implemented to improve disability management performance include a network of medical providers rated on a five-star system, a surgery nurse program to assist injured workers prior to a scheduled surgery, a return-to-work specialist to intervene with medical providers on prolonged restrictions and clarify ergonomic requests, a centralized employee disability management process to provide consistent application of accommodations, comp and leave, and an accelerated claims closure process targeting difficult and long-standing claim files to reduce outstanding liabilities.

See also: 

• TC Transcontinental Packaging fosters synergistic teamwork (Part 2 of 3)
• Advocacy drives the Lumen Technologies workers’ comp program (Part 3 of 3)
• 2021 Workers’ Comp Risk Management Award